IITians rejected in UP polls

Lucknow, May 16 (UNI) Eight former IITians who left their plushy jobs to toil in the election arena not only failed to make a mark in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, but even lost their security deposit.

While 155 legislators of criminal background were elected, all the candidates drawn from prestigeous institutions like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) were rejcted outrightly.

Encouraged by the success in Tamil Nadu,the former IITians had formed a political outfit Bharat Punarnimran Dal(BPD) and had fielded eight candidates but could not manage the public support.

Pankaj, a BPD candidate from Ayodhya seat, got only 349 votes among 15 candidates to be in the last position. Similarly, Ajay Kumar Singh got 407 votes from Nababganj Assembly seat to be in 19th position. Avdhesh Kumar Mishra was the recipient of minimum votes when he got 233 votes at Varanasi(South) seat.

Well knwon medical professional from Kanpur Punit Nath Shukla got sixth spot with 289 votes from Generalganj Assembly constituency.

Aditya Bajpayee, the BPD candidate from Kalyanpur in Kanpur, managed sixth spot with 1424 votes. Incidentally, the Kalyanpur constituency also includeds the most prestigious IIT-K.Another candidate Ajendra Kumar from Rajpur performed even worse with 12th poistion with handful of 424 votes in up polls.

An M Tech from IIT-K who was working with IT giant TCS before jumping into the politics-wagon Omendra Pratap Singh is, however, not disappointed with the results. ''We will continue to fight with the wrongs of the political system and make inroads into the heart of educated and sensible electorate,'' he declares.

Claimed to be having membership of over 20,000 all over the country, the BPD has yet another professional with it in the form of Ravishankar who contested unsuccessfully from Varanasi Cant seat.

''Atleast instead of criticising the existing system we took the initiative to participate in the political field,'' said the former executive in an export firm.

UNI