Cancel gram panchayat polls, Congress tells Gujarat governor

The Opposition has demanded cancellation of the village panchayats elections, slated for December 29. The demand comes in the wake of the High Court order directing the state government to comply with compulsory reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in village panchayats elections.

A delegation of SC, ST and OBC Cells of Gujarat Congress met Governor Dr Kamla on Friday and made a representation to her seeking cancellation of the village panchayat elections.

They demanded that the notification for the elections should be revoked and a new notification with mandatory reservations should be issued. According to estimates, 872 village sarpanch posts and over 8,900 seats in panchayats should be reserved for SC, ST or OBC, but they were being deprived of the benefit.

The Congress delegation demanded that the state government initiate survey of the reserved seats at the earliest and start the election process once again. They pointed out that the State Election Commission had failed to take any steps in spite of the High Court order.

The High Court had passed the order on a petition filed by petitioners from two villages of Padadhari taluka of Rajkot. The court had asked the state government to rectify any similar illegality committed in other panchayats and to issue appropriate orders.