TIRUPATTUR: Residents of the Nayakkaneri village panchayat in Tirupattur boycotted the rural local body polls on Saturday to protest the reservation of panchayat president post for Scheduled Castes (SC-women).
According to sources, the panchayat has over 3,450 votes, mostly tribals. There are just seven persons belonging to SC communities (2011 census). But, against opposition from villagers, Indumathi (21), an SC woman, filed her nomination for the president post and won unopposed as she was the only contender. On Saturday, she was escorted to a polling booth by police personnel to cast her vote for the District Panchayat Ward Member (DPWM) post.
“We had demanded that the post be allotted to either the General category or Scheduled Tribe (ST), but our demand was not considered,” said K Sivakumar, former panchayat president. “The panchayat has nine wards but none filed nominations for Village Panchayat Ward Member (VPWM) posts and nobody contested for Panchayat Union Ward Member (PUWM) posts,” said Sivakumar. As for DPWM post, only 20 voters from the panchayat exercised their franchise, sources said.
Collector Amar Kushwaha, along with Superintendent of Police K Balakrishnan, went for an inspection to Nayakkaneri. When contacted, the collector told TNIE, “The polling went peacefully and we requested the villagers to exercise their franchise. Security has been beefed up in the panchayat to prevent any untoward incident.”