Some of the brightest minds from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the nation's premier institutes for engineering, have decided to quit their high-paying jobs to set foot in politics. A group of 50 alumni from IITs across the country are all set to form a political party to fight for the rights of scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST), and other backward classes (OBC).
Calling themselves the Bahujan Azad Party, the political outfit is currently awaiting the approval from the Election Commission of India. "We are a bunch of 50 people, all from different IITs, who have quit our full-time jobs to work for the party. We have applied to the Election Commission for an approval and are meanwhile doing groundwork," Naveen Kumar, a 2015 B.Tech graduate from IIT Delhi, was quoted as saying by Press Trust of India.
The group members mostly belong to the marginalized communities and believe that the backward classes are still not getting necessary education and employment. The IIT alumni have decided to take the process slowly and claimed that they will not be contesting for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to avoid doing a "hurried job", PTI reported.
"We do not wish to do a hurried job and end up being reduced to just one of those small political outfits with big ambitions. We will begin with contesting the 2020 Bihar assembly elections and then aim for the next Lok Sabha polls," Kumar, who is leading the group further added.
The IITians have already begun their campaign on social media with a poster of their party that has pictures of BR Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, and APJ Abdul Kalam.
The group, however, is not a rival to any political party or ideology. "Once we have the registration, we will form small units of the party which will start working on the ground for our target groups. We also do not wish to pitch ourselves as a rival of any political party or ideology," Kumar told PTI.
