BSP to contest all 117 seats in State

Chandigarh, Aug 7: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had drawn a blank in the last Punjab assembly elections, today announced that it would contest all the 117 seats in the February 2007 assembly polls.

Announcing this at a press conference here, BSP national general secretary Narendra Kashyap said the BSP would emerge as ''a third force'' in the state elections as an alternative to the ruling Congress and the Akali-BJP combine.

He said BSP president Ms Mayawati had already announced in Jalandhar that the party would contest the state elections alone with no possibility of an electoral adjustment with any party.

Besides fielding its candidates on all the 29 seats reserved for the scheduled castes (SCs), the BSP would field candidates from other backward classes (OBCs) and the general category as well in the rest 88 constituencies, Mr Kashyap said.

The BSP has so far decided 18 candidates while the second list would be finalised by August 15, he said.

All the 18 candidates in the first list, selected by a committee of the BSP Punjab unit, have been given a nod by BSP president Ms Mayawati, Mr Kashyap said.

UNI