Punjab Cong welcomes postponement of panchayat polls

Punjab Congress today welcomed the postponement of panchayat, block samiti and zila parishad polls by a week in the state and described it as victory of the people agitated over the haste shown by SAD-BJP government in holding them in the middle of harvest season.
In a statement issued here, Punjab Congress Chief Pratap Singh Bajwa demanded that the panchayat elections be held first and the block samiti and zila parishad polls later, the normal process adopted in the previous years.
Charging the ruling SAD-BJP of having ulterior motives in reversing the order of elections, he requested the state election commissioner in restoring the normal process.

He said the SAD-BJP government was using all "illegal" means to "grab" the panchayats and asked Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to rise above petty politics and behave like a statesman.
The Congress leader said he had met the State Election Commissioner S S Brar on April 23 and brought to his notice large number of cases of bungling in voter lists and delimitation of wards.
The Punjab Congress has also requested the SEC to remove anomalies in voter lists and check arbitrary changes made in zones of block samiti and zila parishads.
He said the state Congress has already filed a petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the delimitation of wards in villages, which will come up for hearing on April 26.