Lok Satta campaign from July 25

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.