The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) would field its candidates for all the 3,065 members of block panchayat and 391 members of district panchayat in the coming three-tier panchayat elections. State president of BSP Meghraj Singh said this while talking to The Pioneer on Tuesday.
Panchayat elections are not fought on the party lines but all the parties are taking them very seriously and are keen to get their workers elected in the various positions of Panchayati raj institutions; the BSP too is geared up for these elections and would soon declare the official list of candidates.
Megraj Singh said that his party would take the issue of negligence of rural areas by both BJP and Congress to the villages and ask people not to vote these parties. He said the rural areas of the state are facing the problems of electricity, water, ration supplies and roads and the people of the state has seen that both BJP and Congress have done nothing for them in last 13 years. He claimed that his party would make a district wise scheme for rural development if voted to power. “If elected to power the BSP would first of all remove the middlemen from the Panchayati Raj system and would provide good governance to the people” Singh said.
The BSP is third largest party in the state in terms of vote share. Party’s vote share in the state is rising steadily, in 2007 assembly election the BSP cornered 11% of the total votes while in 2012 elections it increased to 13%. The party has pockets of influence in districts of Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar and Dehradun but the party has much ground to cover specially in the mountainous areas of the State.