The panchayat polls would be the first major elections - and a semi-final battle - before the 2017 UP Assembly polls, when the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) would be seeking re-election under the stewardship of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Led by Yadav, the SP won handsomely in the 2012 Assembly polls, but was then trounced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Although the SP scored wins in the recent Assembly bypolls, the panchayat elections would be a sort of a referendum for the party before the 2017 elections. Poll reverses in 2014 and changing dynamics of the voting pattern have made the party jittery and led it to delay the panchayat poll process.
More From This Section
Meanwhile, the BJP is eagerly awaiting the results of the panchayat polls, buoyed by its performance in the local bodies polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bengaluru.
The UP panchayat polls would be held to elect 59,164 gram pradhans, besides 74,3297 gram panchayat, 78,075 kshetra panchayat and 3,134 zila panchayat members.
The SP has largely won seats on the back of the Muslim-Yadav combination. But with the SP pulling out of the Janata Parivar grand alliance on the eve of the Bihar Assembly polls and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi declaring his party's ambitions in Bihar and UP, the polls math has become more complicated for the SP.
That the panchayat polls are important can be gauged from the fact that SP President Mulayam Singh Yadav has been exhorting party cadres to gear up for it. Addressing a public meeting in Lucknow last month, he said the Left was able to rule West Bengal for decades primarily because it performed well in the panchayat polls. When the Communists lost the grassroots elections, they also lost power in the state, he pointed out. Yadav senior has been critical of the SP's panchayat poll preparedness and even doubted the prospects of candidates backed by the party.
Scheduled to be held between September 9 and December 15, 2015, the panchayat elections were delayed by several weeks as pre-poll processes related to reservation of seats and electoral rolls were incomplete. Then on September 5, the Akhilesh Yadav-led government postponed the gram pradhan elections through a government order (GO) in which it sought to hold elections for zila and kshetra panchayat members before those of gram pradhans.
The five-year tenure of the gram pradhans ends on November 7, but according to the GO, their elections would be held later. The terms of the zila and kshetra panchayat members will be over on January 17 and March 13, 2016 respectively, but their elections have been scheduled before the expiry of their terms.
A petition has been filed with the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court terming the GO ultra vires and seeking its revokation. The petitioner also urged that the three-tier panchayat elections be held simultaneously. The court has issued notices to the state government and the State Election Commission in this regard.
With regard to another petition, the Allahabad High Court has questioned the state government about delaying the reservation process for gram panchayat polls through a GO written to the state panchayati raj director.
Meanwhile, Opposition parties slammed the state government for delaying the poll process. UP BJP President Laxmi Kant Bajpai criticised the GO, saying the state government had created a "Constitutional crisis" of sorts by planning to hold the gram pradhan elections after the expiry of the terms of its members. He said it was trying to prevent the newly elected gram pradhans from voting in the UP Legislative Council elections scheduled to be held in January-February 2016.
"The state government is trying to muzzle democratic norms through its tactics," he added. The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also expressed doubt about the fair conduct of the panchayat elections, citing the "pressure and muscle power" of the ruling party. The BSP said the police would be unable to discharge its duties for free and fair polls.