From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore
Bangalore, Jul 20: With the sudden postponement of the elections to the Gulbarga zilla panchayat standing committee rocking both houses of Karnataka legislature, with the opposition members resorting a dharna and abrupt adjournment in the upper house while their counterparts in the lower house staging a walk out, the B S Yeddyurappa regime was forced to schedule the elections on July 25.
Rural development and panchayat raj minister Shobha Karandlaje had a tough time in the assembly in defending the BJP government’s decision to postpone the elections scheduled for July 16. Even though the chief minister and law and parliament affairs minister S Suresh Kumar tried their best to justify the government’s move, the opposition member staged a walk-out protesting against the brazen violation of the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act.
In the council, home minister and leader of the house Dr V S Acharya was unable to convince the numerically strong opposition members, who observed a dharna in the well of the house forcing the chairman to resort to an adjournment. When the negotitations between the treasury and opposition benches in the chairman’s chamber, Dr Acharya finally announced that the government would hold the elections on July 25.
Congress opposition leader in the assembly Siddaramaiah and his counterpart in the council V S Ugrappa, who raised the issue in the two houses respectively with the support of JD(S) members, alleged that the ruling BJP had sought to postpone the standing committee elections scheduled for July 16 in order to buy time for engineering defections under its ``Operation Lotus’’ to wrest control of the 60-member Zilla Panchayat, which had 38 Congress members.
The opposition members in both houses charged the government for seeking to subvert the panchayat raj system as BJP did not have faith in the decentralization of powers and condemned the government’s unconstitutional move.
Congress deputy leader in the assembly T B Jayachandra, KPCC working president D K Shivakumar, JD(S) leader H D Revanna and other members in the assembly attacked Karandlaje and contended that the government wanted to prevent MPs, MLAs and MLCs belonging to Congress from taking part in the standing committee election on flimsy excuses.
The chief minister, who intervened in the discussion, assured the house that all the legislators and MPs, as well as the Taluk Panchayat presidents would be allowed to vote in the standing committee elections of the zilla panchayats and necessary arrangements would be made in the absence of the opposition members.
In the Upper House, Congress opposition leader V S Ugrappa took the government to task for postponing the elections in contravention of the Panchayat Raj Act py instructing the zilla panchayat’s chief executive officer by sending a telex message even as the election process was on on the lame excuse that legislature session was underway.
When the opposition members staged a dharna protesting against the government’s action and refused to heed chairman Veeranna Mathikatti’s repeated requests to resume their seats forcing an abrupt adjournment, the government finally relented and announced that the elections will be held on July 25.