Final phase of panchayat polls today

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, AUG. 19. In the third and final stage of panchayat elections, 7,081 villages in 23 revenue divisions of the State will go to the polls on Monday to elect the Sarpanch and ward members. At the completion of the three phases, the newly-elected Sarpanch and Ward members will meet on Thursday for the first meeting of gram panchayats.

The State Election Commission said they had set up 70,477 polling stations and drafted 2,14,000 polling personnel for duty. As many as 68,419 ward members would be elected on Monday.

A group of 110 neutral observers from Lok Satta, which visited polling stations in 66 problem villages of Kurnool, Adoni and Nandyal divisions, reported that of the 1,000 people they met, 890 people said that they voted for the first time in these panchayat elections.

The SEC said that the feedback given by such independent organisations would help develop mechanism to plug the loopholes in the electoral process. These observers were given passes and allowed to visit polling stations, talk to voters to find out whether they were facing any problem of intimidation. They were told not to issue any instructions to polling personnel.

Some of the points highlighted by the Lok Satta team were that the precautions and steps taken by the district administration enabled villagers to vote without any pressure. Voters felt that similar arrangements should be made in future elections also.

However, there was little response to the Lok Satta effort at making the contesting candidates fill up a questionnaire seeking information about the educational qualification, marital status, number of children, profession, income, involvement of crime, etc. A majority of the candidates did not return the questionnaire while some returned blank forms.

The team found that candidates belonging to various political parties freely canvassed near polling stations in violation of the SEC guidelines. The team found that in some villages where local leaders were `strong,' the voting pattern was one-sided, and bogus voting took place.

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Section  : Southern States
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