The Panchayat Verdict

Unlike the recently held Assembly elections of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, that must have come as a great shock to the BJP, the panchayat elections of Assam must have brought some cold comfort to the party. Having to hand over power to the Congress in the three States ruled by the BJP was a catastrophe that the BJP could hardly have expected. In the panchayat elections of Assam, however, it is the BJP that has been leading in all categories of the polls. Counting had not been completed at the time of writing this, but the trend was clear: the BJP was leading overall in the all categories of the panchayat elections, though in some constituencies like Jorhat the Congress was ahead of the BJP in the number of seats won. However, with much more than half of the total number results announced, the BJP is bound to emerge as the winner. This is surprising for at least two reasons: (a) The BJP has managed to win elections in Assam only very recently. Earlier, the BJP had no presence at all in Assam. (b) The voting in the panchayat polls of Assam has been totally in contrast to the national trend reflected in the Assembly elections of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where voters who had earlier voted for the BJP voted for the Congress this time. The panchayat elections of Assam have been most shoddily conducted. Hundreds of names have been left out in the voters’ list and all those people have been deprived of their franchise this time. In several panchayats, voters have had to vote a second time because some names had been missing from the voters’ list were discovered later on. One gets the impression that such lapses marred the panchayat elections because of the lack of care in holding elections that were conducted mainly in the rural areas of the State. One hopes that the next panchayat elections of the State will reflect far greater care by the organizers concerned.