Will form coalition with anyone wanting to work for betterment of Sikkim: Bhaichung Bhutia

Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, former Indian football captain Bhaichung Bhutia, who launched the Hamro Sikkim Party in April, said Thursday his outfit will form a coalition with anyone wanting to work for the betterment of his state.

Bhutia said that the HSP is currently in touch with national as well as regional parties which want progress of Sikkim.

"We are talking to all the parties right now. Whichever parties -- national or regional -- are wanting to work for the betterment of Sikkim, we are ready to form a coalition...," Bhutia told PTI when asked about his party forming a coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party or any other party in the Lok Sabha polls.

The general elections are scheduled to be held next year in the country.

Bhaichung had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2016 West Bengal Assembly elections as a Trinamool Congress candidate, but had lost the polls and quit Mamata Banerjee's party in February.

The former Indian football captain had then floated the HSP in April this year.

Meanwhile, the Hamro Sikkim Party Thursday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to change the "immigrant" tag of the Sikkimese Nepali community, he told reporters here.

Bhutia said the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) has not done anything to change the word from the apex court verdict delivered around 40 years back even as it had promised in its manifesto.

The the Sikkimese Nepali community had been tagged as "immigrant" in a Supreme Court judgement. Sikkim has three ethnic communities Lepchas, Bhutias and Nepalis.

"We have filed a petition in the Supreme Court today urging it to look into it so that the word of immigrant is not used for the Sikkimese Nepali community..." he said.