LSP-led alliance gears up to contest Delhi poll

Ravi S Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 4

Leaders of the Loktantra Suraksha Party (LSP)-led alliance, comprising five parties for the upcoming Assembly election in Delhi, will meet shortly to identify seats and firm up its manifesto points.

LSP national convener and former Haryana MP Rajkumar Saini today said the leaders had agreed to meet soon with reports on the constituencies having sizeable presence of SCs and OBCs in Delhi.

“The alliance has been formed to ensure political empowerment of Dalits and members of backward castes. It will have no truck with other parties, including the ruling AAP, Congress and BJP in Delhi which goes to poll in February.

He said the alliance’s name and other poll-related issues would be decided in the next meeting.

Besides LSP, the Bihar-centric Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), headed by former Union Minister Upendra Khushwaha in Narendra Modi government, is the other big constituent in the alliance. While Saini rebelled against the BJP to form his party, Khuswaha too had walked out of the BJP-NDA alliance.

Saini underlined that the alliance would be selective in putting up nominees only in those constituencies which have sizeable presence of SCs and OBCs.

He said the AAP government should clarify on its earlier promise of ensuring political empowerment of Dalits and OBCs. He said the LSP, which has been focused in Haryana, will expand in other states, starting Delhi. It contested in the last Assembly election in Haryana, but failed to win any seat.

The LSP organised a dharna here yesterday to press for the demand to give the highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna, to Savitribai Phule and Jyotirao Phule, posthumously. The occasion was birth anniversary of Savitribai Phule.

The Phule couple was the 19th century social reformer and Indian icon hailing from lower caste in Maharashtra. They promoted girl’s education and campaigned against discrimination on the basis of gender and caste.