A splinter party of KeADILan, Parti Reformasi Insan Malaysia (Prim) has decided not to contest the Teluk Kemang by-election.

Party pro-tem deputy secretary-general R.N. Rajah said in a statement today that the pull-out is "to protest against Barisan Alternatif's decision for not fielding an Indian candidate in the upcoming by-election".

He said the party central working committee had decided to withdraw their candidate, P. Uthayakumar, at a meeting yesterday.

"The BA's action in outrightly not even bothering to talk to us despite our letters dated May 15 and May 19 to avoid a split in the opposition votes is seen as arrogant and not consistent with all the BA component parties, DAP, PAS, KeADILan and PRM, being multiracial parties," said Rajah.

With the withdrawal of Prim from the by-election, Teluk Kemang will now be a straight fight between S. Sothinathan, who is political secretary of MIC chief S. Samy Vellu, and KeADILan's information chief Ruslan Kassim.

Rajah accused KeADILan of taking away one of the only two parliamentary seats given to the party's Indians in the last general elections, whereas the Indians under the BN have seven parliamentary seats.

He added that KeADILan and PAS are being insensitive and disrespectful of the Indian community when they 'sidelined at least six potential Indian candidates for the Teluk Kemang election namely Karpal Singh, M. Kulasegaran, Rajendran Nalliah, K. Arumugam, Prof. Perumal Ramasamy and P.Uthayakumar'.

Rajah claimed that "99 percent of the Indians left KeADILan just before last general elections because of Chandra Muzaffar and Anuar Tahir's anti-Indian policy and their decision to consciously and outrightly discriminate, sideline and marginalise the Indians".

"When we left we called for the resignations of Chandra and Anuar should KeADILan lose marginally (in seats) where the Indians form a substantial number," he said.

According to him, Prim supports the five reformasi websites which call for the resignations of Chandra and Anuar as most members of KeADILan and the opposition have lost confidence in both of them.

He claimed that they had received numerous calls from the opposition Indians, in particular from DAP Indians, who expressed disappointment with the DAP since this is the first time in the history of Teluk Kemang that an Indian candidate is not fielded.

Rajah added that the Malays have 32 MPs, the Chinese have 10 MPs, while the Indians have no opposition MP.

"BA gives the impression that the opposition is the monopoly of the Malays and the Chinese only," he said.

The nominations for the by-election will be held tomorrow and polling on June 10. The by-election is being held following the death of the BN's S.A. Anpalagan, who was Health Ministry's parliamentary secretary.

Anpalagan won the seat in last November's with a majority of 9,942 votes, making it a tough seat for BA to wrest.

According to the voters records, Teluk Kemang has 66,646 voters, with Malays accounting for about 45.44 percent, Chinese 33.23 percent, Indians 20.64 percent, and others 0.7 percent.