Bahujan Azad Party (BAP), a party founded by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni in 2017, announced on Wednesday its intention of contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from nine states.

In its first press conference, which was held in New Delhi, BAP said that the party will contest on a total of around 100 seats in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Telangana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Jammu-Kashmir.

Party founder Naveen Kumar, an IIT-Delhi graduate, said that the party’s focus will be on issues such as employment, education and healthcare facilities. It will also work towards bringing in a revolutionary change in the agriculture, industrial and manufacturing sectors.

“Our party is firmly committed to realise the vision and mission of our Constitution, which is social democracy,” Kumar said.

Accusing political parties of running the country “like an enterprise house and killing the constitutional spirit”, Kumar said that his party is ready to “fight back for the cause of social democracy”.

“Till today no political party has done anything concrete to realise the dreams of the Bahujan (masses). So we have come forward to weed out the culture of subordination, money and muscle power, and violence that has become part and parcel of Indian politics,” he said.

He said that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has granted slate as the party symbol.

Speaking on the occasion, Sumeet Kumar Jatav, a 2014 IIT- Kharagpur graduate, said that “it is a crime against youth if we remain silent on the undemocratic and anti-constitutional activities going on in the country”.

His batchmate from IIT-Kharagpur, Sarkar Akhilesh, said that parties which call themselves “crusaders of social justice” are “nothing but business houses, which is dangerous as well as hindrance in realising development and social justice via social  democracy”.

BAP was founded in December 2017 by 50 IIT-ians. Its current leadership includes 2006 IIT-Delhi graduate Anand Kumar Maurya, 2015 IISC-Bangalore graduate Amit, KGMC Lucknow graduate Dr Komal and UIT Uttarakhand graduate Akshara.

Besides the young graduates, the party also has Professor Arun Kumar Chaudhary, a former associate of BSP founder Kanshi Ram, as its mentor and Advocate Ashok Arora, a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court of India.