Keep traders, realtors out of politics: Cong leaders

Businessmen and realtors should not be allowed to enter electoral and party politics, Congress leaders Prof B K Chandrashekar and Dr L Hanumanthaiah said on Thursday.

They said the Legislative Council, considered as a ‘reflective chamber’, should not become a rich people’s forum. But the just-concluded Council elections from the Assembly witnessed manipulative politics by some affluent individuals.

They said they were addressing the media in their personal capacity and not as Congress members. Mavalli Shankar, a Dalit leader, was also present.

Chandrashekar said a forum of different sections of society, which can be a pressure group on political parties, would be soon formed to drive home a message to political parties to cleanse the system. A good number of social workers, writers, thinkers and those in public life will join the forum.

He said the council polls showed that monied people had a vice-like grip on electoral politics. “Such developments should be desisted by all. Because, even political parties become weak when people, flush with funds, begin dictating terms to parties.”

Commenting on fielding a fourth candidate when the party did not have sufficent votes to win on its own, Chandrashekar said greatest care should have been taken by the leadership to ensure that the the first three candidates comfortably won the polls.

The State Congress president and the legislature party leader have to explain on what basis they allocated preferential votes while drawing strategies for the elections. If there was no fourth candidate, then trouble and confusion would not have been there, he said.