Naidu turned to Govt to scuttle Panchayat polls

Panchayat polls were last held in Andhra Pradesh in 1995, and despite a High Court direction, they were kept pending after the terms of the bodies ended. Andhra Pradesh has filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against the High Court order.

The Union Ministry for Rural Development has now decided not to pursue the Bill owing to some extent to its own realisation that the proposed changes in the law would endanger the democratic structure of the panchayat bodies but mostly due to the angry protests from Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Kerala had also voiced its opposition and, surprisingly, so did BJP-ruled Gujarat.

Given the requirement of two-thirds majority for a Constitution amendment Bill to become law, the proposed piece of legislation would not have gone through in Parliament.

The Bill, which also drew the ire of NGOs working in the rural development sector, seeks to do away with mandatory direct elections to two of the threelayers of the panchayat raj structure. They had suspected in the BJP-TDP movea sinister plan to prevent elected representatives at the district and lower levels from demanding more powers.

The proposed amendment seeks to make direct elections mandatory to only the lowest tier, the gram panchayat, and optional to the block and district panchayats. It also proposes an electoral college of chairpersons of the gram panchayats for electing the members of the block panchayats whose chairpersons in turn will elect the members of the district panchayats.

The reasoning in the Bill in favour of indirect elections to two of the threetiers is that under the existing system there is no “strong organic linkage” between the various rungs.

But this logic was strongly criticised by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh and his Karnataka counterpart, S.M.Krishna, who dashed off protest letters to Union Rural Development Minister Sunderlal Patwa.

Singh in his letter noted that the existing laws take care of the aspects forwhich the 87th amendment was being sought. But with indirect elections provided for in the proposed Bill, the representatives would have no direct accountability to the people, he said.

Krishna argued that “to make direct elections to two of the three tiers of the panchayats optional will amount to virtually negating the democratic nature of the panchyati raj system in the country.” According to him, panchayats which do not directly elect their members would become “weak supplicants” and dependent on doles from the state and Central governments.

About the argument that there is no organic linkage among the three rungs, opponents of the Bill say in the case of West Bengal, representation has been provided for members of the lower bodies in the higher bodies but without voting rights. If the purpose is to ensure co-ordination among the three tiers, the West Bengal model would suffice, they argue.

After the Bill was introduced in Parliament, Andhra Pradesh was quick to promulgate an ordinance to take over the administration of the panchayats till elections were conducted.

Even when the bodies existed, the sarpanches were unhappy that the Janmabhoomi programme, touted as a feather in Naidu’s cap, was being implemented by governmt departments and not panchayats, according to a study by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.