Bhaichung Bhutia's HSP 6 member panel to select candidates for LS polls

Former footballer Bhaichung Bhutia's Hamro Sikkim Party (HSP) Thursday constituted a six-member committee to select candidates for the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in Sikkim. The committee is headed by HSP president Bina Basnett while senior leaders Bhaichung Bhutia, Biraj Adhikari, D S Limboo, H C Rai and Nima Lepcha are the other members.

The party said the selection process would be transparent as only those candidates with an unblemished and proven track record of public service would be entertained. "We want to bring to Sikkim a new brand of clean politics with a new democratic way of doing things that connect the party with the electorate at all times," Bhutia, who is the party's working president, said at the inauguration of the state election headquarter here.

He said that he was confident that people would join the "revolution of cleansing the politics of Sikkim" and building a new, prosperous and happy state for all. The HSP has said it would contest in all the 32 Assembly seats and the lone Lok Sabha seat in Sikkim.

(With inputs from agencies.)