BHOPAL: Samrasta (harmony) through unopposed election of village sarpanchs and gram panchayats will be the buzzword in the three-tier panchayat polls in Madhya Pradesh, whose poll schedule was announced by the State Election Commission on Friday.
Just before State Election Commissioner BP Singh announced the schedule for the panchayat polls to be held in three phases between June 25 and July 8, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday announced a slew of incentives for the gram panchayats that will not only elect their heads and members unopposed, but particularly elect women as sarpanch and panch unopposed.
“It has been seen that local body polls, particularly in the villages (panchayats) not only lead to competition between candidates, but the contest even turns into conflicts and after the polls are over, such conflicts sometimes turn into violent feuds,” Chouhan said.
“In the last panchayat polls, many villages had unanimously decided to elect their sarpanch and panch unopposed. Such a harmonious development is possible even in these polls. We’ve decided to bracket such panchayats this time as Samrasta Panchayats and model villages.”
The villages that elect their sarpanch unopposed will get Rs 5 lakh, while those which elect their sarpanch unopposed for the second time in row will get Rs 7 lakh, the CM announced. The village panchayats that elect their sarpanch and panch unopposed will also get Rs 7 lakh.
Reiterating that his government was committed to empowerment of women, the CM announced, a bigger bonanza of Rs 12 lakh for village panchayats, where only women are elected as sarpanch and panch, and Rs 15 lakh to all those village panchayats, which elect women as sarpanch and panch unopposed sans elections. “We would be happy if the same formula is followed in the urban local body polls also,” Chouhan said.