Money, muscle power in elections a challenge: Prashant Bhushan

New Delhi: With the government refusing to blink, Team Anna on Thursday decided to end its indefinite fast saying "why waste time on fasts", efforts should be made to give India a political alternative. Addressing his supporters on Thursday, Anna Hazare said he and his team will end their fast at 5 pm on Friday.

The government and the Congress took a jibe at Team Anna saying their "real intention" has come out in the open while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the civil society group has every right to form a political party.

Talking to IBN 18 Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai, key Team Anna member and senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan said providing people with a political alternative will be a unique experiment but it is possible.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Rajdeep Sardesai: What has Team Anna's fast really achieved? You haven't got a Lokpal, you haven't got an SIT, all you have got is that you have said that you are exploring a political option.

Prashant Bhushan: What option do you leave people with? People have been asking us that the establishment is not responding to your demands, where do we go from here, can you not provide us with an alternative?

Rajdeep Sardesai: So it's your last and final option?

Prashant Bhushan: How do you win elections without muscle power and money power? The answer is we don't know if we can, but since crores of people, their expectation, their hopes have been roused by this movement, we hope that this will be a unique experiment in this country.

Of course we will not have the kind of funds which these political parties have, if we enter the electoral fray, but the question is whether the public support for this movement will be able to bridge that gap, of money and muscle power etc., that's the real challenge before the people.

Rajdeep Sardesai: How will you find 543 candidates whom you believe will inverse that pyramid, do you really believe that you will be able to find them?

Prashant Bhushan: There are millions of people in this country who are much fitter and who would be much better candidates than those who control or those who sit in Parliament today. We only have to find ways and means of selecting those candidates, of filtering those candidates to ensure that the candidates who are thrown up by this selection process are those who are honest, who have a demonstrated commitment to public service and who subscribe to these values of changing the nature of political process and the nature of power in this country.

(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest)