Newly-floated regional party Bharat Punahnirman Dal of professionals has decided to field candidates in 25 seats in the coming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
The party will contest the polls in Lucknow, Noida, Jhansi, Meerut and Ghaziabad districts, Omendra Bharat, party's senior leader and candidate for Arya Nagar assembly seat of Kanpur, said.
Bharat, an IIT-Kanpur professional, said the Dal was launched in December to fight casteism, corruption, crime and quotas.
He said engineers affiliated with IIT Mumbai, Kanpur and Delhi serving in top companies, qualified doctors, lawyers, teachers and students were members and the party had selected four candidates for the first phase of the assembly elections.
He said Punith Nath (MD) will contest from Generalganj in Kanpur, Ajit Shukla (M Tech IIT-Mumbai) from Lucknow Cantt, Ankit Tripathi (B Tech IIT-Mumbai)
from Sarojni Nagar in Lucknow besides himself.
The party was also considering the names of Prof Mukta Gupta of Bundelkhand University, Jhansi and senior physician of Meerut Sarita Tyagi and was in talks office-bearers of like-minded parties like Bharat Navnirman Dal and Bharat Raksha Dal to fight the elections, Bharat added.
Nath said, "We started it as an anti-reservation movement, which is now converted into an ideology and political party. We are not opposing those who are taking the advantage of reservation but our fight is against those who want a strong vote bank by doling out quotas."