The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Villagers threaten to boycott elections

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 14, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Villagers threaten to boycott elections

By Our Tamil Nadu Bureau

SALEM, APRIL 13. Villagers of Pudukothambadi near Kalpaganur in Attur taluk in this district and residents of wards 17 and 18 in the Palacode union of Dharmapuri district have threatened to boycott the elections.

While lack of drinking water for the past 18 months is the reason cited by the Pudukothambadi residents, the Palacode union residents' threat followed the shifting of the polling station from the Urdu Primary School to the Government Boys Higher Secondary School.

The Pudukothambadi residents told the Salem Collector, S. Ramachandran, that they had to trek long distances to fetch a pot of water. Women and children were the worst affected, they said.

They took up the issue with the panchayat president and other officials but they could not solve their problem, they said. The villagers pointed out that steps had been taken to provide drinking water to the village by connecting a pipeline from the Mettur-Attur Comprehensive water supply scheme. With funds from the Attur MLA's Constituency Development Scheme, the work was almost completed. But as the pipeline had to cross the Salem-Vriddhachalam rail line, the villagers approached the railway officials in Tiruchi, under whose jurisdiction the track falls.

But the railways demanded a huge amount for giving permission for the pipeline work. When the villagers expressed their inability, the Railways refused to grant permission. A woman from the village claimed that the pipeline could be allowed to pass through a small rail bridge nearby. In fact, the Railways had allowed a private person to lay a separate line under the bridge, she said.

According to a communiqué from the Railways, Rs. 2.17 lakhs should be paid for laying the pipeline for 15 feet. The village panchayat was not able to pay this sum. The district administration also did not intervene in the matter.

Hence the villagers urged the Government either to get permission from the Railways or pay the amount on their behalf from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund for laying the pipeline.

The Palacode residents said they had been casting their votes at the primary school booth for the past 40 years but it was changed without notice. The present booth is 2 km away, they claimed.

Although the tahsildar held negotiations with the residents, neither side arrived at a solution. The primary school is equidistant from the two wards and has the required infrastructure, says a resident. Despite repeated representations, the officials neither took steps not to shift the booth nor gave reasons for shifting it. But they promised to shift it during the Assembly elections. The residents, who were against the plan, threatened to go ahead with boycotting the polls.

The Dharmapuri Collector, M.A. Siddique said, "Owing to the use of electronic voting machines the number of voters had been increased from 1,000 to 1,500 lessening the number of polling stations in urban areas." The Higher Secondary School booth is at a distance of only 300 metres he said and ruled out its shifting.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu