Umesh Baurai and Dr. Avnish Jolly, Chandigarh :Professor .K.Gopal Iyer shared his field experiences and brought to light the major role of factors like caste, money and muscle power in PRIs elections. Huge amounts of money were spent on liquor, sweets and soft drinks during the panchayat polls. Based on his first-hand field experience Dr. Iyer stated that the Panchayat elections witnessed the use of intense violence in booth capturing and bogus voting. Polling Staff and the police in the polling stations remained silent spectators to the whole disturbed scenario.
Significantly, he observed that the intensity of political mobilization and political activity were remarkably higher in the Gram Panchayats where men in the ‘general’ category contested, as compared to elections to the ‘reserved’ categories of Scheduled Castes, whether men or women. The Panchayat Samiti and Zilla Parishad elections were contested with party symbols. Interestingly, although SAD (B) in alliance with BJP was supposed to be opposing the Congress, this did not prevent intense conflicts between the two in a few constituencies located in Tarn Taran, Amritsar and Bhatinda Districts. There were also lots of complaints from the Congress Party of unfair rejection of their candidates’ nominations by the Returning Officers. The net result was that SAD-BJP combine came out overwhelmingly victorious securing over 85% of Panchayat Samiti and Zilla Parishad seats.
The Gram Panchayat elections were held on 26th May 2008. The cards were already laid down as the SAD had already secured the majority seats. It affected the mindset of the voters who willy-nilly decided to vote in favour of the SAD candidates. Though the selection of the contestants was not exclusively based on the party criteria yet people knew who were supporting which political party. In every panchayat there were factions either based on party affiliation or between the two erstwhile sarpanches. This was irrespective of the category of seats allocated either to ‘general’ or ‘reserved’ categories. Even in the ‘reserved’ Scheduled Caste panchayats, it was the Jat Sikhs who decided the outcome of the elections. The Dalits were virtually overshadowed by the Jat Sikhs.
In the seats reserved for women it was found that it was either their husbands or other relatives who were actually canvassing for them. It was found that even in the earlier elections wherever women candidates were elected as sarpanch, it was the male who served as proxy sarpanch. The patriarchal dominance was very much pronounced in form popularly known as ‘Pradhanpati’.
It was also observed that the code of conduct was violated as liquor flowed like water during whole electoral process. Every day each factional contender in a panchayat spent approximately Rs. 3000 to 5000 regularly for 5 days. There were many cases, particularly in Zira, Nabha and Jagraon Blocks, where votes were sold for prices ranging from Rs. 500 to Rs. 3000.