Lok Paritran Party

A start has been made. And we should make this start a strong and a very very strong success also. These five individuals who come from very strong education background, instead of moving forward towards the ultimate goal, which is to work in high end technologies and earn top money, in fact chose to go back to roots and work to clear the system which we all talk in great lengths, in fact topic of discussion in every meeting, but we never do anything to fix the system. So for the least instead of talks we can go ahead and become a strong backbone for these individuals.

Rajpurohit (TRP to friends) is the president and the brain behind the party, which also includes Ajit Shukla, Amit Besseen, Chandrashekhar, S Vasudev and Dheeraj Kumbhat—all graduates from IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kanpur.

The six are clear their party won’t remain on paper. ‘‘We plan to contest the next Assembly elections and then stand for Parliament. Our ideology will have no relevance if we do not implement it,’’ points out Chandrashekhar.

While Rajpurohit and Chandrashekhar are from Rajasthan, the others come from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Chennai. Explaining how they came together, Chandrashekhar, an IIT-Kanpur graduate and now the treasurer of Paritrana, says: ‘‘We are not batchmates but like-minded people.’’ Their classmates, who have already started blogs on them, say they are also some of the brightest guys around.

The publicity-shy budding politicians are reluctant to talk about what prompted them to start the party (Rajpurohit, for instance, decided to leave his Masters in Economics course mid-way in the US), only admitting they felt ‘‘betrayed’’ by the system. Rajpurohit talks of ‘‘the high level of corruption, and ideological and intellectual bankruptcy in almost all the established social and political organisations’’.

On the party’s website, www.paritrana.org, Rajpurohit is more elaborate. He came back, he writes, ‘‘due to the current plight of India and the grim future facing the country…to do whatever is necessary for the Land’’.

A few months ago, Rajpurohit, who worked with in the tribal belt of Udaipur, was picked up and roughed up by Udaipur police. The illegal detention and the brutal treatment by the police seemed to have further fueled his discontent with the system.

Chandrashekhar started out as a social worker but says he decided to join politics as he felt ‘‘betrayed by those who appeared to be the most enthusiastically concerned about the problems of the Land’’.

‘‘The group has been working for the past three years on an informal basis. Since we floated the idea to launch Paritrana six months ago, many joined and several of them left. The core team is the one that finally survived,’’ Chandrashekhar says.

With the party now formally launched, the six have started a nationwide campaign to inform people of their party, its objective and ideology. Posters of the new party now dot many cities, including Jodhpur, Bangalore and Udaipur. They have also started an online campaign to recruit like-minded people.

If you would like to contribute to the party, visit paritrana.org

(Trana) means the act of relieving a conscious entity from the state of distress or pain. However, this relief may not be of permanent nature. (Paritrana) is the complete relief implying the end of the very cause of distress.

Avnish Katoch

An IT professional for 17 years, based in the US since the last 12 years. Founded NGO My Himachal and then Himachal Media Pvt. Ltd.. A Himachali forever. Always trying to bring together people whose hearts beat for the state.