Congressmen burn Badal effigy

MUKTSAR, June 14: The Congressmen led by senior party leader Jagmeet Singh Brar today burnt the effigy of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Sing...

MUKTSAR, June 14: The Congressmen led by senior party leader Jagmeet Singh Brar today burnt the effigy of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and took out a protest march against the alleged bungling in panchayat elections at the instance of the ruling party. They also demanded that the election process be scrapped.

Addressing a rally following the protest march, Brar said the ruling alliance of SAD-BJP had made a mockery of the panchayat elections by indulging in malpractices to grab the power at the grass root level. He said that under a high-level plan to capture power at the grass root level, genuine votes had been cancelled and fictitious ones registered in large numbers.

Brar alleged that the family members of the Chief Minister had personally intervened in Lambi, Gidderbaha, Malout and Muktsar blocks to get the nominations of candidates belonging to other parties cancelled. He also alleged that the supporting documents attached with the nominations were deliberately thrown away by the officers to cancel the nominations.

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He said the ruling Akali Dal had betrayed the people by making false promises. He said Badal, who had promised to solve the Punjab issues after the formation of the BJP government at the Centre, had not raised even a single issue with the Prime Minister so far.

Brar said that the Home Minister had reiterated on the floor of the Parliament that there would be no change in the UT status of Chandigarh and a move was on to scrap the Rs 12,000 crore Bathinda Refinery Project and Badal was witnessing all this like a mute spectator.

“If Badal is really serious about the state matters, he should immediately withdraw support to the Centre government,” he said.

LUDHIANA:
A total of 9,400 candidates are in fray for elections of panches and sarpanches of 871 village panchayats in the district scheduled to be held on June 21

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.According to information available with Additional Deputy Commissioner (Dev) Sarbjit Singh, who is incharge for the elections, 15,712 persons had filed nomination papers out of which 1,963 were rejected while 4,349 had withdrawn their papers.

In all 126 panchayats in the district have been elected unanimously while 224 sarpanches and panchayat members (panches) in another 161 villages were elected unopposed. The highest number of panchayats elected unanimously were in Sidhwan Bet block where 23 were elected by consensus. The least number of unanimously elected panchayats was in Dehlon block where four villages could elect the panches and sarpanches unopposed.

It was officially stated that in seven villages (two in block Ludhiana II, four in block Machhiwara and one in Doraha) no nomination paper was filed. These include Kotli Afgana in Doraha Block, the native village of slain Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

The number of unanimously elected panchayats in other blocks is (total number of villages in brackets):- Doraha 7 (57), Jagraon 8 (57), Khanna 10 (84), Ludhiana-I 8 (62), Ludhiana-II 14 (163), Pakhowal 7 (63), Samrala 14 (61), Sudhar 5 (52), and Machhiwara 26 (114).