IIT, IIM alumni to join poll fray

LUCKNOW: After businessmen, dancers, eunuchs and teachers, the colourful Indian political bandwagon will get a touch of intelligentsia in the coming polls with alumni of the elite IITs and IIMs planning to test their electoral fortunes.

While the Bharat Punarnirman Dal, a political party founded by a group of former IITians has announced its first list of eight candidates for the coming Lok Sabha polls, students from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow are actively involved in managing election campaigns of different political parties.

"BPD will be contesting at least 20 seats from Uttar Pradesh and at least 40 across the country on the platform of good governance, restoration of ethics in politics and opposition to caste based reservation," party president Ajit Ashwalayan Shukla, an M.Tech from IIT Mumbai, told reporters.

The party had contested the 2007 assembly polls in UP and had got a vote share of 2.5 per cent.

Giving details about the BPD's candidates, Shukla said, "The candidates for Lucknow, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Varanasi, East Delhi, South Delhi, Hyderabad and Bhubaneshwar have been finalised. Talks with other prospective candidates are on and candidates for other seats including Deoria, Kushinagar and Gorakhpur will be announced soon." Amonng the alumni testing their political fortunes is 1994 passout Ranjan Chaudhary, who specialised in human resources and finance. He has been declared as the BJP candidate from Mohanlalganj Lok Sabha constituency in UP.

"I had joined politics in May 2004 with the Congress and was initially involved as a backstage manager and in desiging party strategy for UP. Later on I was in the constituency management team of Amethi and Rae Bareilly," Chaudhury told reporters.

In October 2008, he parted ways with the Congress. Asked how being a management graduate has helped him at the grassroots, Chaudhary said, "Management has helped us to look at the problems from all angles."

Prior to joining politics Ranjan had taught HR and practised finance in Australia. He was also a member of the board of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad.

Another IIML passout Vaibhav Agarwal, who did his specialisation in agri-business management, is looking after BJP prime ministerial candidate L K Advani's campaign in the state's colleges.

"My main job is to link the students in the state for the party's campaign 'Advani@campus'. We have also joined hands with R K Misra (the winner of Lead India) under a forum called 'Change India', whose aim will be to sustain the intensity of campaigns which were taken out after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks," Agarwal, who has been made the state convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, said.