CHENNAI: A dramatically-titled press release "The Other Face of Lok Paritran" was circulated at a press conference on Wednesday by the breakaway faction of the barely two-month-old political party that debuted with the May 8 Assembly elections.

K. Rajamany, P. Elanthirumaran and A. Ishrayel Maheshwar, who were the Lok Paritran (LP) candidates at Annanagar, Chepauk and Thousand Lights respectively, said they quit the party because there is "no co-ordination between practice and policy."

They announced that they intended to launch their own party with the same ideology as Lok Paritran — transparency in government.

Their key complaints were that Mylapore candidate Santhanagopalan Vasudev was shown partiality for campaign funds by the party's heads and given extra attention "based on caste."

The three said that they were not informed about the accounts on party funds and there was no written policy constitution and procedure. They were also disgruntled about the way office-bearers were appointed. They all accused LP national head Tanmay Rajpurohit of being dictatorial.

Mr. Rajamany said that LP Mudukulathur candidate Vanchi Narayanan would also be joining them.

However, when State president of LP Aravind Seshagiri was contacted, he said that he had spoken to Mr. Narayanan who expressed his support for the LP.

`Immature charges'

Mr. Seshagiri said that the rift was caused due to "childishness" and attributed the allegations of the breakaway group to "immaturity". About the accusations regarding party accounts and office-bearers, he said: "We are just learning and are inexperienced. We will sort this out over a period of time. As for the accounts, even the Election Commissioner gives us one month after the elections to present them, but these guys wanted to see them the next day."

Mr. Rajpurohit and Mr. Vasudev were unavailable for comment as they are in Bangalore regarding the expansion of the party.

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