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New Rajasthan party to announce poll promises, implementation time on legal document
Abhinav Rajasthan Party (ARP), which was registered as a political party on August 22, has announced it will contest all 200 seats in assembly elections due by the year-end.
A new party has said it will write its poll promises on a legal document that voters can use in court if those are not fulfilled.
Abhinav Rajasthan Party (ARP), which was registered as a political party on August 22, has announced it will contest all 200 seats in assembly elections due by the year-end.
“We want to be legally bound to fulfil our promises, so we will give them in writing on stamp papers to 50 prominent people of each constituency, apart from issuing them in a press conference when we announce the state manifesto,” said Dr Ashok Choudhary, a member of the party’s state council, the top decision-making body.
The 50-year-old doctor from Nagaur district, who quit Indian Postal Service in 2003 after 10 years of service, has been running a programme, titled Abhinav Rajasthan, since 2008 to make people aware about the Right to Information Act and how the law could be used to not only get photocopies of documents but also inspect government offices and files. When the campaign completed 10 years, Abhinav Rajasthan registered itself as a political party.
The legal document containing ARP’s promises will mention the time period in which they will be fulfilled and how much they will cost the state. For example, it will declare Rajasthan a dry state on April 1, 2019. In three months, the party, if voted to power, will ensure that all visitors to government offices are greeted by officers by standing up. Teachers, doctors and disabled will be exempt from this.
“We will gift ₹6,000 for every hectare to farmers every year. The farmers don’t need to repay this. In our first year, we will cancel 10% of all farm loans. This will cost the government ₹10,000 crore,” Choudhary added.
Political analyst Narayan Bareth said Abhinav Rajasthan Party’s initiatives indicate that mainstream political set-up has lost its credibility. “People have experience of politicians reneging on their promises but they should have faith in a leader’s character and words. Promises on stamp paper, for me, hold no meaning when legislators lie after taking oath in the House,” he said.
The election symbol of Abhinav Rajasthan Party is a torch. “We chose torch because we believe we have used the RTI Act as a torch so far to make everything transparent. After we are voted to power, we will empower every citizen by implementing rule 4 of the RTI Act that mandates sharing all information of government departments on their websites,” Choudhary said.
The party has 10,000 members and 160 of them are in the state council. “All members of the state council have equal power. We believe in decentralising power. For example, our district units will select candidates for assembly elections and inform us,” he said.
The party is also seeking crowd funding through newspaper ads in which banks details are mentioned for people to donate. The party will announce its candidates and the manifesto on November 1, Choudhary said.
