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Police lathicharge Cong. rally in Gujarat

By Manas Dasgupta

GANDHINAGAR JUNE 10. A rally taken out by the Congress-sponsored Gujarat Panchayat Parishad was lathi-charged by police when the participants attempted to break the cordon to reach the State secretariat here.

Though the police action was expected, as rallies were never allowed to reach near the secretariat complex for security reasons, the Congress leaders demanded action against the guilty police officials.

The pradesh Congress president, Amarsinh Chaudhary, and the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Naresh Raval, alleged that the police action on the "peaceful and non-violent rally'' was not only "unprovoked'' but also "inhuman.''

They alleged that police manhandled women workers and claimed that about half-a-dozen partymen, including three women, were injured in the lathicharge. The clothes of some women participants were torn and their ornaments were looted by police. Police, however, denied the charges.

The rally — virtually a rehearsal for the preparations for the coming Assembly elections — and attended by senior State Congress leaders, was taken out in protest against the "ever-shrinking'' Government allocation to the panchayats which the Congress believes is the BJP Government's attempt to paint as "devil" the image of the main Opposition party as it was in control of most of the panchayats. The Congress had wrested control of 23 of the 25 district panchayats and about 80 per cent of the 225 taluka panchayats and a majority of the 13,000 or so village panchayats from the BJP in the elections in 2000.

The parishad president, Kishore Taviar, who is also the president of the Congress-controlled Dahod district panchayat, said that ever since the Congress captured most of the panchayat bodies, the BJP Government had not only started reducing the budgetary allocations to the panchayats, but had also stalled a grant of about Rs. 700 crores. It had even imposed a ban on the panchayats spending funds generated from their own resources.

``It was only because the BJP had been virtually wiped out from the panchayats that the Government was tightening the belt so that all the developmental works were suspended and the people turn against the Congress, Mr. Taviar said.

Mr. Raval pointed out that the budgetary allocations to the panchayats, which was 11.61 per cent of the total State budget in 1998-99, had been cut down to 6.30 per cent in 2001-02 and further reduced to a mere 4.58 per cent in the current financial year. The Government had also sent instructions to the treasuries to suspend all payments of grants to the panchayats and not to release the funds generated by the panchayats from their own resources. The rally, attended by the presidents and other office-bearers of all the Congress-controlled district and taluka panchayats and others, later submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, demanding his resignation.

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