By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Bengaluru: The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) has maintained its presence in the different Gram Panchayats in Karnataka, especially in Dakshina Kannada region. The SDPI won in 70 Gram Panchayat wards out of 372 that it contested.
In Mangalore alone, 45 SDPI candidates registered their victory. In Kodagu (Coorg) in nine wards, in Udupi and Hasan four wards each, in Raichur, Mysore, Bangalore, Uttar Kannada, Chikmagalur, it is one ward each that the SDPI has won.
But there have been no major advancement at all since its last performance in Panchayat election of 2010, where SDPI had won 67 seats back then.
In 94 wards, the party candidates finished second. In five Gram Panchayats, the SDPI has a fair chance of getting Sarpanch post. This also includes Sajipa Gram Panchayat, the local area of state health minister U T Khader.
Abdul Majeed, SDPI Karnataka state general secretary, told TwoCircles.net that Panchayata election was critical and the results have come as morale booster for the party. The reason, he said, “During 2010 Panchayat election, our party was just formed, we had contested on new entrants with no party ideology. After winning, to be honest, they neglected the wards resulting in development failure. But in this election, we fielded ideologically committed cadre of the party, who contested against anti-incumbency and succeeded in retaining the seats so it’s a quite a success for us.”
This time around, the SDPI is hopeful that with their ideological committed cadre handling the wards, the party can deliver on its agenda. “We have formed ‘Elected Representative Management Board’ with the sole aim of guiding our public representatives on various issues and to have evaluation and monitoring of their work on regular intervals. This time, we will transform our Panchayat wards into model wards for corruption free development,” Majeed said.
The SDPI state general secretary also added that the party is hopeful that Gram Panchayat election results will have positive impact on their efforts to galvanize grass root support to target Assembly and Parliament seats in future.
Meanwhile, the Welfare Party of India (WPI) after biting dust in the last assembly elections, has made a comeback with debut seats in gram panchayat election. The WPI won 30 out of the 72 seats it has contested. In Jamat-e-Islami’s strong hold Gulbarga, the WPI won 10 wards, in Mysore eight wards, in Bidar four wards, in Udupi three wards, Kodagu two wards, and in Bijjapur, Koppal and Dakshin Kannada one ward each. Interestingly, out of 30 elected representatives of WPI, eight are non-Muslims.