The Hindu : Trinamool, Congress stage walk-out over Panchayat Bill

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Sunday, Jul 27, 2003

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Trinamool, Congress stage walk-out over Panchayat Bill

By Our Special Correspondent

KOLKATA JULY 26. The Trinamool Congress and the Congress today staged a walk-out in the Assembly today protesting against the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government's "belated" move to introduce the West Bengal Panchayat Bill, 2003 to tackle poll violence.

Earlier, participating in an hour-long debate, the Trinamool legislator, Saugata Ray, said though his party appreciated certain features of the Bill, it could not support it as it was introduced much after the panchayat polls, in which the ruling Left Front "terrorised" the opposition parties. "We find it a meaningless exercise, especially after what the Leftists had done in the panchayat elections. They had prevented at least 23,000 nominees of the Trinamool-BJP combine from contesting."

The House passed the Bill, moved by the Panchayat Minister, Suryakant Misra, after the amendments brought by the Opposition were turned down. The Bill makes the State Election Commission solely responsible for conducting the panchayat polls.

In the wake of large-scale violence in the panchayat elections, the Government introduced a panchayat election law which makes violence at polling stations, booth-capturing, instigation of communal or class hatred and other malpractices a cognisable offence with prison terms.

The Congress MLAs led by Atish Sinha staged a walk-out, saying the Bill was brought in in haste. "It should have been sent to the select committee," they said.

Elections to the three-tier panchayats are governed by the provisions of the West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1973 and the West Bengal Panchayat(Election) Rules, 1974. The provisions of the Act do not deal with the law relating to elections exhaustively, especially the provisions enshrined by the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution.

Mr. Misra said the Bill was necessary to bring about a convergence between the panchayat election procedure and the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls. It was brought to incorporate the provisions of the 73rd and 74th amendments relating to reservation and delimitation of constituencies.

The communal and hate campaigns would be punished by three years' imprisonment, booth capturing by at least a year and three years if the accused is a Government employee, removal of ballot papers would mean a one-year term.

This could go up to two years if the accused was found carrying weapons near the polling booths.

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