Gram panchayat polls: Model village in Ahmednagar to witness elections after 30 years

For the primary time in three a long time, mannequin village Hiwre Bazar in Ahmednagar district is ready to see a contest within the January 15 gram panchayat elections .
The drought-prone village has earned the excellence of being a mannequin village for its efforts on rural transformation and water harvest. Till the 2015 polls, the village took a collective choice on who will run the gram panchayat to keep away from battle. The village head, Popatrao Pawar, was holding the place for the final 30 years.
Last 12 months, the Centre bestowed Padma Shri to 61-year-old Pawar. This 12 months, he has been challenged by personal faculty trainer Kishore Samble. Efforts made by Pawar and his supporters to keep away from the election has failed with the group led by Samble searching for a change of guard within the village.
“A collective and consensus approach was always the strength of this village, which helped Hiwre Bazaar emerge as a role model in rural development. Still, we believe in democracy and elections are a part of the process,” mentioned Pawar.
“While taking some hard decisions in the interest of the village, you often cannot please everybody. Therefore, deviating from the past, we are set for a contest in the gram panchayat polls,” he added. Speaking about Samble’s clarion name for “parivartan”, a member of his group mentioned: “The elections are to end the monopoly of one group, which takes all the decisions in the village.”

The Hiwre Bazaar gram panchayat, with seven seats, will go to polls together with 14,233 different village our bodies on January 15. The counting of votes will begin on January18. The gram panchayat polls usually are not contested on social gathering symbols. Another attention-grabbing election that’s being keenly watched is in Ralegansiddhi, social reformer Anna Hazare’s village in Ahmednagar.
Earlier this month, Hazare, who’s revered by villagers, had convened a gathering to keep away from a contest between two teams. He urged the villagers to reach at a consensus and guarantee all 9 candidates are elected unopposed. However, his efforts failed and of the 9 candidates, solely two have been elected unopposed.