SRINAGAR – Peoples Conference Chairman Sajad Lone has asked the Panchs and Sarpanchs to not allow traditional political parties to tame them to subservience and rather use the MLC elections as an opportunity to uphold the integrity of the Panchayati Raj System.
All these mainstream political parties have come together in an ugly convergence of interests to ensure that the Panchayat System remains powerless and defunct. They have also politicized the Panchayat System and consequently put the lives of Panchs and Sarpanchs at risk. MLAs across party lines are unanimous in their opposition to the decentralization and liberalization of power as they see Panchs and Sarpanchs as great threats to their manipulative monopoly.
Stating that electing inefficient, corrupt and visionless leaders has eroded the credibility and efficacy of governance in the State, Sajad Lone appealed to the Panchs and Sarpanchs to use their precious votes to bring in Change and shun the paralyzing status-quo policy of traditional mainstream. All traditional mainstream parties have humiliated the Panchayat representatives, first by exploiting the elections for power politics and then by debunking the elected representatives.
In a rotten political system the elected and the electors are both culpable for rendering an entire nation into penury. If corrupt and inefficient politicians keep getting elected, the electors need to look within and introspect. It is the sacrosanct responsibility and duty of electors to elect leaders who are best suited to effect Change. The traditional political parties wish that the Panchayat System remains a lower-tier subsidiary of the mainstream rather than an empowered grassroots system of governance.
Panchs and Sarpanchs should realize the onerous duty they owe to the Panchayat System and the nation in not surrendering and submitting to the political parties as such a submission would set a disastrous precedent. Panchs and Sarpanchs will come and go but the Panchayat System is there to stay and the system should start on a note of dignity, independent standing and integrity. Hence the Panchs and Sarpanchs should consider their votes to be the collective deposits of trust invested in them by their constituents. They owe it to their constituents to uphold their rights and dignity.
The MLC elections provides an opportunity to the Panchayat Representatives to stand-up to the patronizing and trivializing political parties and establish the Panchayat System as independent from the centralized political mainstream. This is an opportunity for them to start a journey that has a potential of empowering the historically disempowered common-man to raise him from slavery to proprietorship and justice.
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