For twenty-five-year old Shruti Mishra formi-ng an organisation called Youth4Politics was not a tough task.
Though her struggle begins with finding “clean” young citizens whom she wants to join her team to form a political party which will be able to contest the 2014 elections.
The organisation is confident about finalising the party’s name and announcing names of their youth members within a month.
“We started this organisation in March this year and I quit my work in 2010. We want to fill this vacuum created in politics by encouraging the youth to contest for MP elections at an early age as the existing parties don’t give a chance to youngsters to come forward and work from the scratch,” said Mishra, who used to work with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) earlier.
Youth4Politics has 100 members from all walks of life, including professions such as law, medicine and engineering. Representative of the group held a clarion call meeting on Saturday at Press Club to spread awareness about their aim of involving youth in active politics.
“We don’t want to be associated with any of the existing parties or even Anna Hazare for that matter as our plans were made almost two years ago about forming a constitution abiding party,” said Divya Parasar, co-founder of the group from Bihar.
The group aims to reach out to people in rural areas and use technology for youth living in urban areas.
Innovative approach
“We don’t aim to spend a lot of money like other parties do. We want to approach the public through innovative ways,” said Mishra.
She hinted at using social networking sites for campaigning and similar innovations but refused to give more details about their game plan.
When asked how will they verify criminal records of the interested candidates, members said they will make candidates file an affidavit declaring their background.
“Our existing members will also keep a tab on the interested candidates. We appeal to the youth who are educated, intelligent and do not
have a criminal record to come forward and form a political party for change,” added Mishra.