Can we expect the Panchayat polls to be fair? -Soter

 Lead Article published in oHeraldo, April 25,2022

In a month from now the general elections to the Village Panchayats will be held across Goa. These elections in 186 Village Panchayats assume significance in the background of the verdict from the just concluded State Assembly elections and the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections which are due in two years. The political party re-elected to govern the State will be hell bent on controlling the Panchayat institutions to consolidate its hold at the grassroots before the national elections. The government’s claim about making villages self-reliant is antithetical to its development model, that revolves around snatching the rights to the natural resources from the village communities and handing them over to industrialists. But with Goans hardly known to introspect and learn lessons from their political blunders, can we expect the Panchayat elections 2022 to be any different from the past?

The tragedy of a Goa sedated with a party culture is that its 84% literate people are least bothered to self-govern; the powers for which were mandated through the historic Seventy-third Constitutional Amendment in 1992. The fact that it took around 25 years to get an electoral injustice remedied demonstrates the lack of seriousness of the Goan people in asserting their democratic rights. All these years, all that the Goa State Election Commission (SEC) was entrusted with was conducting the voting and counting in local body elections, as all the ward boundaries and reservations got fixed and notified by the Director of Panchayats (DoP) by bypassing the principles of natural justice. Even after the fraud was exposed time and again, by some civil society groups and the media during every Panchayat election since 2002, the Gram Sabhas remained silent. Several Elected Panchayat Members saw nothing wrong in government bureaucrats carrying out the delimitation and reservation of wards, this despite the State Election Commission (SEC) being in place as mandated by the Constitution. While this mischief served the seasoned politicians and the political parties in manipulating the panchayat elections, we should not forget that the people remained silent accomplices in these unfair electoral practices in the local bodies.

It is for the first time in 28 years, since the Seventy-Third Constitution Amendment was implemented in Goa, that the entire electoral process for the Village Panchayat elections has been entrusted to the SEC. It was the desperation of one political party in the last municipal elections of 2021 which resulted in a High Court petition to challenge this injustice. As the Court took up the matter seriously, the lid over this can of worms got blown off. For the first time the manipulation by the Govt officers in the conduct of local body elections was exposed. Till then every political party in government happily controlled the electoral outcomes in local bodies with tailored-to-fit ward boundaries and ward reservations. The Goa Forward Party deserves the credit for this legal intervention which helped rectify this fraud. But will the transfer of powers to the SEC ensure that the Panchayat elections will now be free and fair, given the fact that this decision arose from a compulsion to comply with court orders?

The process adopted by the SEC in carrying out the delimitation of Panchayat wards is already showing signs of the same manipulation carried out all these years by the DoP. Though it's for the first time that the draft delimitation proposal was put out for public scrutiny and suggestions before finalisation, the bare minimum time given for this exercise and not providing timely information to the public on the draft proposal raises doubts about the SEC’s neutrality in the electoral process. The ward delimitation maps remain vague as usual, as the physical boundaries are not highlighted with important landmarks by which the public can easily identify and check for geographical contiguity. The news reports about 900 odd suggestions for corrections being received from the public on this delimitation proposal do not mention the specific nature of suggestions received, nor the categorisation of the citizens from whom these suggestions were received. The response from the Gram Sabha members can be expected to be negligible. Now the delay in notifying the final delimitation of wards, by sending the proposal for obtaining the consent from the DoP and the government, raises even more suspicions.

The chances for a free and fair election to the Village Panchayats in Goa may continue to remain a distant dream. Without tightening the rules and regulations for an accountable and transparent process in the delimitation and numbering of wards and reservation of seats for the Panchayat polls, there remains enough scope for the government to poke its nose and influence the outcomes. There is all possibility that the political party in government will continue to manipulate the ward boundaries and dictate the reservation of wards to suit its interests. In all probability the SEC may employ the same tactics of the DoP in notifying the delimitation and reservations of wards along with the election dates at one go.

As for the role of civil society, one can only expect perfunctory noise as usual and issuing of guidelines for tactical voting without strengthening the foundations for village self-governance in Goa. As Goa’s villages disappear in the guise of tourism and infrastructure development, the Goan needs to rise above ego, greed and a slavish mentality and remain vigilant.

(The author is a Social Activist and has worked in creating awareness on the issue of local self-governance.)

https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/Opinions/Can-we-expect-the-Panchayat-polls-to-be-fair/189093