Panchayat polls in mid-July

By R.J. Rajendra Prasad

HYDERABAD, JUNE 21. After several postponements, the elections to the Mandal and Zilla Praja Parishads are expected to take place in Andhra Pradesh in the middle of July. This would be a mini general election, in which an electorate of about 3.86 crores will elect 14,624 members of Mandal Parishad territorial constituencies and 1,095 Zilla Parishad territorial constituencies, who would later elect Chairpersons of 23 Zilla Parishads and 1,100 Mandals in the State.

The elections have become crucial in view of the emergence of the Telengana Rastra Samithi, set up by the former Deputy Speaker of the A.P. Assembly, Mr. K. Chandrasekhara Rao, which will contest the elections on the sole plank of separate statehood for Telengana. Nine Congress MLAs from the Telengana region are now camping in Delhi to meet Ms. Sonia Gandhi, to convince her of the need to declare that the Congress is committed to the division of the State, so that they can contest the elections as separatists. Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao appears to have taken the wind out of the sails of the Congress by going all out for separation now, and if the Congress in Telengana region cannot come up with a similar demand, it is sure to suffer a serious setback in the Panchayat elections. The BJP is also divided on the issue, because while it contested against the Telugu Desam in the 1997 Lok Sabha polls, it declared its support to separate Telengana, but times have changed and now it requires the support of 29 TDP MPs for its survival at the Centre. And so the party is indulging in semantics, saying it is still for separation, but not for the present, because it is not in the agenda of the National Democratic Alliance.

The Panchayat elections are being held on a 5-tier system, in which the MPTC and ZPTC members are elected on a party basis, while in the earlier 3-tier system, the sarpanches of the villages were elected on a non-party basis, and they in turn elected the MPP presidents and ZPP chairmen. But in 1987, while N.T. Rama Rao was Chief Minister, ZPP chairmen and MPP presidents were directly elected. The MPTC and ZPTC members have no executive powers, other than electing the presidents, while the sarpanches, the MPP presidents and ZPP chairmen had all powers. The 5-tier system was opted for by the earlier Congress Government in 1992, and the Telugu Desam Government obtained an unanimous resolution by the State Assembly seeking a Constitutional amendment to revert to the 3-tier system. An all- party meeting at Delhi last month to seek support for such an amendment was inconclusive, and the State Government had no option but to go ahead with the 5-tier system.

The State Election Commission laid down clear procedures for the registration of political parties contesting the elections, fixing a ceiling of Rs. one lakh for the campaign to ZPTC and Rs. 50,000 for the MPTC.

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Section  : Southern States
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