Parts of New Town will go for panchayat elections on Saturday but banners have been put up across the township asking voters to boycott the polls.
Most residents of New Town stay in housing complexes and housing co-operatives and receive civic services from the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) that acts as the local urban body.
The poll campaign that started a few weeks ago has irked several residents due to the use of high-decibel sound systems that caused discomfort, especially to senior citizens.
Over the past few weeks, the landscape of New Town has also changed as poll graffiti have appeared on boundary walls of both housing complexes and co-operative buildings.
Suman Bhattcharya, a resident of BC Block, said that voting for any party in this election would be fruitless as the elected representatives would have no connection with the residents’ needs and wants.
“How will a panchayat handle a planned satellite township like New Town? This is a political game and we refuse to be a part of it,” Bhattacharya said.
Samaresh Das, who heads the New Town Forum and News (NTFN), a social welfare trust dealing with issues in New Town, said that they had campaigned extensively asking residents to boycott the election.
According to Das, they had collected signatures of over 12,000 residents seeking that the NKDA-administered area be kept out of the purview of any panchayat and had submitted the appeal to the panchayat and rural development department months ago. “The promise to exclude New Town from the panchayat election process was not fulfiled. So residents have decided not to vote.”
Das pointed out that the election is for the Jyangra Hatiara II gram panchayat. “We have nothing to do with them and we don’t need any representation in a panchayat as they will not be able to provide any civic service to us,” he argued.
According to a notification issued for the panchayat elections by the Rajarhat Development Block in North 24- Parganas, eight mouzas in New Town Action Area IA, IB, IC, ID, IIB, IIE and parts of Action Area III are under the Jyangra Hatiara II gram panchayat.
These areas will elect eight members of the panchayat samity.
According to a senior district administration official, there are nearly 13,000 residents in the township who are eligible to cast their vote.
“This figure is still too low for the formation of a municipality or a corporation,” said the official.
A senior NKDA official said that despite being listed as panchayat areas all these areas still fell under the ambit of the agency and Schedule I of the New Town Kolkata Development Act clearly marks out the boundaries where NKDA has power to act as an urban local body.
This essentially means that NKDA still has the authority to collect property taxes, sanction building plans, build and maintain roads and parks alongside rendering other civic services.
“We have not received any directive about amendment of the NKDA Act,” the official said.
Several residents rued the lack of the NOTA (None of the Above) option in the panchayat poll, which is there in both Assembly and Lok Sabha poll ballots. “Pressing on NOTA in large numbers would have been the right kind of vote boycott. But in the absence of that, we can simply get our vote cancelled by stamping on more than one symbol on the paper ballot,” said a resident, while admitting that doing so would get registered as a mistake rather than a mark of protest.
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