Poll in December 2011 to involve 2 crore voters in Gujarat

By Japan K Pathak, Gandhinagar, 30 October, 2011

If you read our article ‘Busy November for Gujarat BJP’ published on 28th October, and are curious about why so many root-level Sneh sammelans, garib kalyan melas and sadbhavana fasts in one month, here is the answer.

The state is going to witness elections for as many as 10,371 gram panchayats involving 1.5 to 2.00 crore voters in December 2011! This is undoubtedly a huge chunk of people. Last election in Gujarat on such big scale was held on 21 October 2010 involving nearly 2.5 crore voters. It was nagarpalika, district and taluka panchayats polling day. The next big season of election will be Gujarat assembly poll scheduled in November 2011.

December 2011 Gram panchayats election will be the second test of Gujarat Congress’s new President Arjun Modhwadia. His first test was Gandhinagar civic election in which Congress party secured victory.

The State Election Commission is likely to announce the elections of 10,371 gram panchayats across Gujarat by the end of November this year. Elections are likely to be held by middle of December this year.

Among the gram panchayats that will go to polls, 496 are in Ahmedabad, 194 in Gandhinagar, 789 in Rajkot, 818 in Surat, 536 in Vadodara and 478 in Kutch.

Last gram panchayat elections were held in year 2006 in Gujarat when around 28% of gram panchayats were declared ‘samras’. This means election actually didn’t happen in 28% villages as they elected victorious candidates unopposed. Gujarat government has scheme to reward Samras gram panchayts monetarily. This time the government is expecting Samras gram panchayat number to be around 51% of the total.

Last year when Gujarat BJP bulldozed opposition candidates in district, taluka and civic body polls, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had given credit of victory to his Garib Kalyan Melas in which poor people are given benefits of government schemes directly at one place on one day. Now as gram panchayats poll are closer, from 3 November, Chief Minister Narendra Modi is going to kick off Garib Kalyan Melas – a fortnight affair ending on November 21. There are as many as 27 melas just on November 3 alone. There will be total 225 Garib Kalyan Melas by 27 November.

During this year, Modi also launched Chalo Taluke and Taluka Sarkar initiatives that may affect gram panchayats poll positively.