Gram Panchayat’s Multiple Member system makes sure no one is accountable!

Bengaluru: The gram panchayat polls - a massive exercise covering more than 90,000 seats - is finally over. Democracy is set to come alive at the grassroots but a pertinent question arises: Who will a villager hold responsible if the village pump stops working? Or he is harassed by the local money lender?  

The multiple member constituency, an integral part of gram panchayats, has left panchayatraj institutions bereft of individual responsibility. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Convener of Gram Panchayat Hakkottaya Andolana and a member of the Core and Drafting Committee of the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act Amendment Committee, Nandana Reddy charged that the state government did not even feel it right to identify a geographical territory for every GP member.

In other local body elections including BBMP, Zilla Panchayat or Taluk Panchayat, there is a constituency earmarked for each candidate making it easy to fix responsibility and assign tasks.

“GP polls are fought on the basis of multiple member constituencies, which means each ward or constituency can be represented by one or more members killing the spirit of the electoral process,” she observed. The committee of which she was a part had made 88 recommendations including one to abolish the Multi-Member representation in GP polls.

One of the biggest disadvantages of the multi-member poll is that the voter would not know whom he has voted for nor will the representative be responsible for developmental work. “For instance if a ward or constituency is represented by 2-3 candidates, one can imagine the kind of development which takes place. The committee  recommended the one member - one constituency norm but the government chose two or three other recommendations,” she lashed out.

The end result?  Powerful MLAs, MPs and district in-charge ministers take control of GPs and play their own game. Sources in the government concurred with Ms Reddy’s allegation and felt the huge financial burden might have deterred the government form abolishing multi-member representation.

“If all 94,348 candidates are to be elected from individual constituencies, so many polling stations instead of the current 56,000 stations would be needed. Carving out exclusive polling stations for GP polls would result in undue cost escalation,” a senior bureaucrat observed.