{Panchayat polls} Remove discrepancies in voters’ list: Cong

Chandigarh
Leader of the Opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa on Saturday approached the Punjab state election commission regarding complications being faced by candidates in filing nominations for the panchayat elections scheduled to take place on October 15.
A delegation of Punjab Congress leaders led by Bajwa handed over a memorandum to state election commissioner Raj Kamal Chaudhary and urged him to smoothen the process to ensure an equal playing field. Senior congress leaders, including former panchayats minister Tript Rajinder Bajwa, former health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu and former MLA Madan Lal Jalalpur were also present.
Addressing a press conference, Bajwa said voters’ lists for panchayat elections are with the qualifying date as January 2023, while the Lok Sabha elections were held with the qualifying date set as January 1, 2024. As a result, a voter who became eligible to cast a vote or contest elections as a member or sarpanch, as the case may be, on January 1, 2024, might be deprived of their right to vote due to this discrepancy.
“In some blocks, the lists of sarpanch’s reservation, ward’s reservation and voters list had been made unavailable. This has created uncertainty among the candidates,” Bajwa added.