SHAH ABBAS
Srinagar
All Jammu Kashmir Panch Sarpanch United Forum (AJKPSUF), claiming the representation of panches and sarpanches, Wednesday split hours after one faction announced its candidates for upcoming council elections for four reserved seats of panchayti raj representatives another announced to support the candidates of coalition government.
“We extend our full support to government candidates because we can do nothing if we annoy the government,” said Ghulam Nabi Mir who claims to be the founding chief patron of AJKPSUF.
Earlier in the day, other group claiming to be representatives of the forum announced their candidates for the elections scheduled next month.
“The earlier people are nobody to do with the forum, it is me who established the representative forum on June 15, this year,” claimed Mir adding “we are not in a position to take cudgels with the government”.
Mir said that he met Chief Minister Omar Abdullah who obliged him by accepting his demand that all the panches and sarpanhes should be given honorarium on monthly basis.
“We are thankful to the chief minister whom we handover a 25 point memorandum and he in principal accepted our major demand of monthly honorarium, he also issued 1.5 lakh Rupees grant to each panchayat but that is so little,” Mir said.
Mir claims that he is a retired Panchayati officer and knows legalities about panchayati Raj system and now he is going to challenge the people who earlier “tried to hijack the JKPSUF by announcing the names of the candidates”.
Panches and sarpanches are in the news right from the panchayati elections held in 2011. These elected representatives are divided into so many factions now.
While as Mir’s faction of JKPSUF claims the support of 90% panches and sarpanches and says that they are going to support government candidates in the council elections, his rival faction of JKPSUF has decided to contest the election independently.
Yet another group of panches and sarpanches is accusing the government and all mainstream parties of making them “scapegoats”. These PR representatives believe in boycotting the elections.
