Four-phase rural poll in Jharkhand from May 14 to elect 4345 mukhiyas

The Jharkhand State Election Commission (SEC) on Saturday announced four-phase rural poll in the state between May 14 and May 27.

The poll for the three-tier panchayat will be held to elect 4345 mukhiyas, 5341 panchayat samiti members, 536 zilla parishad members and 53,479 gram panchayat members, the SEC said.

The dates were announced after approval from Jharkhand Governor Ramesh Bais on Saturday.

The first phase of polling will take place on May 14, while the second, third and last phase of polls are scheduled on May 19, May 24 and May 27 respectively, it said.

The counting will take place in three phases. The counting for the first phase polls will be held on May 17 and for the second phase on May 22. The counting for third and fourth phase will be held on May 31.

State Election Commissioner D K Tiwary said the tenure of 4,402 mukhiyas (village heads) and panchayat committees ended in December 2020. "However, the election could not be conducted in time due to various reasons including the COVID-19 pandemic, Tiwary said.

A total of 1,96,16,504 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the polls. Of the total, 1,00,70,721 are male and 95,45,702 are female voters, he said.

The SEC said that as many as 53,480 polling booths have been created in 33,627 buildings. Of the total polling booths, 17,698 are very sensitive, while 22,961 are sensitive.

It said all the 9,470 seats which were reserved for other backward classes in the previous panchayat election, have been declared open category seats for the polls.

The Supreme Court had in January this year declined to recall its earlier order quashing 27 per cent OBC quota in panchayat poll in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The apex court had said the states election commissions would de-reserve OBC seats in all future local body elections across the country unless such quota is determined in strict compliance with its triple test guidelines.

The triple test includes setting up a dedicated commission to conduct an inquiry into the nature and implications of the backwardness in connection with local bodies.

Its second condition is to specify the proportion of reservations required to be provisioned in the local bodies as per the commission's recommendations. The third test is that the reservation should not exceed 50 per cent of the seats reserved in favour of SCs, STs, and OBCs taken together.

Tiwary said that ballot boxes will be used for the polls. There will be 98,081 big ballot boxes and 39,928 medium-sized ballot boxes.

The expenditure limit for gram panchyat aspirants will be Rs 14,000 and for mukhiyas' post will be Rs 85,000. The expenditure limit for panchayat samiti members and zila parishad members will be Rs 71,000 and Rs 2.14 lakh respectively, the SEC added.