Elections for panchayats will be held in Rajasthan in January. The Rajasthan State Election Commission announced the schedule for the election of 9171 gram panchayats in Rajasthan. Elections will be held in three phases. With the announcement of election schedule, the Election Code of Conduct has come into force for the rural areas of the state. Voting will be held on January 17 for the first phase, January 22 for the second phase and January 29 for the third phase.
Due to the petitions filed in the court regarding the reorganization of the panchayats, elections are not being held simultaneously with the panchayat committees and district councils. These elections will be held later. The government will appoint administrators in the panchayat committees and zilla parishad members whose election term is ending.
This time in Rajasthan, the government decided to restructure the panchayats. Due to this, there are 11 thousand 142 gram panchayats in Rajasthan, whereas the last time elections were held for 9872 panchayats. This time some delay was done by the state government regarding restructuring of panchayats and later this reorganization also faced challenges in the court. About 85 petitions were filed in the court.
The court, by its order, dismissed some of the notifications issued by the government for the reorganization of the panchayat. This led to two categories of gram panchayats in the state. One is those who are not influenced by the order of the court. Among these, the format of the voter list has been published, while the other are those which are affected by the order of the court. The format of their voter lists is yet to be published. In such a situation, now the Election Commission is currently conducting elections to 9171 panchayats which are not affected by the court order.
State Chief Election Commissioner Prem Singh Mehra informed that elections will be held in three phases in January in 90400 wards of these panchayats. For the first time, sarpanchs will be selected from EVMs and candidates will get about a week's time to campaign for sarpanch elections, whereas till last time it was not available. This time after the nomination, the list of candidates for the post of sarpanch will be printed and then elections will be held. Election spending limit has also been increased for the post of sarpanch. Last time it was 20 thousand whereas this time it has been increased to 50 thousand. He said that the dates of elections for the remaining Zilla Parishad members and the remaining other Gram Panchayats of Panchayat Samitis will be announced later.
