Press Releases Archive

The Lok Satta Party will be releasing the first list of its candidates for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections and launching its election campaign from July 25. The party has already identified 70 competent candidates to contest in as many divisions and is further scrutinizing the hundreds of applications it has received.

Giving this information to the media, party spokesman Katari Srinivasa Rao and Greater Hyderabad Lok Satta President N. Ravinder said the party would take the slogan, ‘Vote for Lok Satta - Power to People’ to the electorate as part of its campaign. The Lok Satta, they underlined, would devolve powers and resources on locally elected committees, so that they could address people’s pressing problems. In the process, both corruption and delays will be eliminated. The party is committed to allocating Rs.2 crore to each division from out of GHMC funds and translating the concept of ward governments into a reality. They emphasized that the party would not indulge in a negative campaign against other parties; on the contrary it would focus on its positive agenda.

The Lok Satta leaders referred to the glaring contradictions in city life and traced them to concentration of power. “You have skyscrapers, world-class hospitals and international schools on the one side and people leading miserable lives in hovels and unable to access either quality health care or education on the other.” Decentralization of powers and resources would help remedy the situation, they said.

The Lok Satta Party is a launching a five-day campaign to persuade the Government to adopt an amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act in the budget session of the Assembly beginning July 24.

It may be recalled that Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan had presented a draft copy of the amendment Bill to the Chief Minister, the Speaker of the Assembly, the Chairman of the Legislative Council and leaders of all legislature parties. The Bill aims at bringing all elected people including MLAs and MLCs under the purview of the anti-corruption law and plugging all loopholes in it which enable the guilty to go unscathed.

As part of the campaign, people will be persuaded to write post cards to the Chief Minister seeking a change in the anti-corruption law.

This was stated by party spokesmen Katari Srinivasa Rao and V. Laxman Balaji and Greater Hyderabad Lok Satta President N. Ravinder at a media conference.

The party leaders said it was but natural that some parties which viewed the Lok Satta as the party of the future and felt threatened by its growth launched a malicious campaign against it, especially on the eve of the GHMC elections. The party was formed to transform politics in the country and never had it claimed it could be run without money. Honest politics, however, needed honest money. The party had spent a little over Rs.3 crore during the 2009 elections compared to the hundreds of crores of rupees spent by the traditional parties. It accounted for every rupee it raised and spent.

The party spokesmen dismissed the allegations made by certain district leaders as baseless. Some leaders who faced the axe following serious allegations against them chose to spread lies against the Lok Satta.

They pointed out that a committee constituted by the party chose candidates to contest the 2009 elections from out of the many aspirants.