HYDERABAD: After calling it quits in the electoral politics, the Lok Satta has decided to focus its attention on building mass movements and create awareness among people on their day-to-day problems such as lack of proper health care facilities, spiraling prices of essential commodities and growing corruption in the administration. With such programmes, the party wants to stay focussed on the commoners.
The party, which has decided to act as an apolitical body henceforth, will strive to strengthen federalism and local governments, besides exerting pressure on ruling establishments to formulate people-centric policies.
But what made Lok Satta boss N Jaya Prakash Narayan, a former MLA, to take this extreme step of renouncing electoral politics?
According to sources, after the party’s humiliating drubbing in the last general polls, there had been a detailed ‘self-analysis’ within the party leaders over the way the party had gradually lost its charm not only among middle-class people but also among educated sections.
Even as the party leadership had been unable to digest the party’s tragic downfall, the results of the recent elections held to GHMC administered a double blow to the party, which at first emerged as a voice of the proletariat and later gradually metamorphosed into a political outfit.
There is a strong argument within the Lok Satta circles that after the party’s transformation into a political organisation, the party lost its charisma among educated urban voters. “After our party’s transformation into a political outfit, even the educated sections of electors started treating it as mere political party. We have lost grip even over educated voters,” a party leader said.
Because of all these reasons, Lok Satta chief Jayaprakash Narayan is learnt to have decided to call it a day in the electoral politics.