The Hindu : Karnataka News : Gram panchayats crucial in Council polls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 02, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

Gram panchayats crucial in Council polls

By M. Madan Mohan

HUBLI, MARCH 1. Now that the elections to the gram panchayats are over, it is time for the political parties to begin their guessing game over the clout they have acquired at the grass roots. This is despite the fact that the elections to gram panchayats are not held on party lines.

But this has not prevented the political parties from claiming support at the gram panchayat level. Each party's guess is as good as another's, since there is nothing to officially identify the candidates with any party.

Important role

However, the hold of the parties on the panchayat members becomes crucial during the elections to the Legislative Council from the local authorities constituencies. The prospects of party nominees to the Council are made or marred by the panchayat members, who constitute nearly 80 to 90 per cent of the electorate in each of the constituencies.

The undivided Dharwad district, which has two seats from the local authorities constituency in the Council presents a classic example of the uncertainty of the political mood at the grass roots. When the Janata Dal was in power, the party, which claimed the total support of the panchayat members, could not get both its nominees elected to the Council and had to yield one seat to the Congress. Subsequently, the Congress, despite being the ruling party, could get only one of its two nominees elected, the other seat going to the Janata Dal (S). This is how Basavaraj Bommai (JD-U) and A.M. Hindasgeri (Congress) were elected twice from Dharwad despite the change in the political scenario in the State.

Aggressive stance

This time, the Congress, under the leadership of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee President, B. Janardhana Poojary, took an aggressive posture in politicising the gram panchayat elections, while the other parties approached the elections with a certain amount of circumspection.

Mr. Poojary toured the State and said that accountability for the party's performance would be fixed on the local party leadership, including Ministers.

With the elections to the taluk panchayats and zilla panchayats round the corner, the political functionaries at the district level used the gram panchayat elections as a rehearsal for the next round.

Limited

But a random tour of the some of the taluks in north Karnataka revealed that the politicisation of the elections was limited to the periphery and had not percolated down to the village level. Villagers were making their own choices instead of going by political considerations. They appeared to be more interested in the financial and other powers that have been devolved on the gram panchayats than in the political affiliations of the candidates.

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