In keeping with the Supreme Court directive, the MP State Election Commission (SEC) on Friday announced the schedule for three-tier panchayat elections to be held in three phases – on June 25, July 1 and July 8.
In all, 52 district panchayats, 313 janpad panchayats and 23,013 village (gram) panchayats will go to polls. The results for the janpad and village panchayats will be announced on July 14, while that of district panchayats will be announced on July 15, the state chief election commissioner B.P. Singh said.
Elections will be held for the posts for 875 district panchayat members, 6771 janpad panchayat members, 22921 sarpanchs and 3,63,726 panchs in village panchayats. Elections of panchs and sarpanchs in 91 village panchayats where terms of the current representatives are coming to an end in November 2022, will be held separately. However, the polls to the janpad panchayat and district panchayat members comprising these areas will be held during the current phases.
Model code of conduct will be in place from Friday in the panchayat areas while the urban areas will be exempt from the code of conduct as of now, Singh said. He added that the elections to the urban local bodies will also be announced before June 1 as per the directives of the Supreme Court.
As per the schedule released by the SEC, voting will be done using ballot papers from 7 am to 3 pm on the given dates. In all, 3, 93,78, 502 voters will exercise their franchise at 71,643 polling stations. Nomination forms will be filed from May 30 to June 6 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination will be June 10, for all three phases.
The announcement of panchayat polls have come after a long drawn process involving cases in the Supreme Court challenging the rotation and delimitation process and a major row involving OBC quota. The SEC had earlier announced elections in December 2021, to be held in January-February 2022, but cancelled it over the row on OBC quota.
On May 10, the Supreme Court had ordered the SEC to announce elections within a fortnight without any OBC quota. However, following a modification application filed by the state government, the SC allowed OBC quota to the extent that the overall cap of SC/ST and OBC quota will be 50 per cent, as proposed by the State OBC Welfare Commission in its report.
The reservation process for the urban local bodies and panchayat bodies were completed during the past two days, following which the SEC announced the polls on Friday.
The official figures of reserved seats are yet to be made public, but there are indications that the OBC candidates are likely to get an average 11-12 per cent quota at the village panchayat level and 8-9 per cent at the janpad panchayat level. The likely reduction of the OBC reserved seats following the fresh process is likely to cause some controversies, sources said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has announced Rs 15 lakh cash prize for those panchayats where women representatives are elected unopposed. Also Rs 5 lakh will be given to panchayats where sarpanchs are elected unopposed for the first time and Rs 7 lakh where sarpanchs are elected unopposed for second time.
