Political parties run out of steam for panchayat elections?
NIZAMABAD: With TRS party leadership dropping several hints that the new government will soon conduct the gram panchayat elections, the political activity is once again expected to gain intensity in the villages.
But are the parties and their leaders ready for another round of electioneering and the elections?
The answer, if one has to believe the political observers, is a big no.
The reasons are many. But the prominent reason, and the obvious one too, is that both the political parties and their leaders have already ran out of energy as well as the all important ‘resources’.
In Nizamabad and Kamareddy districts, which comprise 530 and 526 gram panchayats respectively, the officials have already started the process to conduct the elections. As a first step, they have started conducting gram sabhas in villages with the objective of collecting data to prepare Backward Classes (BC) voters list. After completing this process, the government will finalise the BC reservations.
However, all political parties and leaders, including those who won in the Assembly elections, are said to be sailing in the same boat and are said to be not too enthusiastic about the gram panchayat polls.
In the ruling TRS for instance, according to political observers, the elected MLAs are likely to advise their village level leaders to approach them after winning the elections as only then they will be able use their good offices to get the funds allotted for the development of their villages .
Far worse is the situation of Congress and BJP parties after their debacle in the elections. BJP is one party that believes village level elections are a big opportunity to the strengthen party at grassroots level, but even their leaders are not that interested. That leaves the local leaders with no option but to depend on their own ‘capacity’ and ‘resources’ to contest in the panchayat elections.
Poll prep underway
Nizamabad District Panchayat Officer (DPO) Krishna Murthy said that officials have already started preparing voters list and will soon submit the same to the government. “We are also waiting for the government notification on panchayat elections and accordingly we will continue with our preparations,” he said.