State Panchayat Elections in Sept –Oct 2012

DELIMITATION TO ACCOMMODATE 50% RESERVATION FOR WOMEN
GANGTOK, 15 Feb: The state panchayat elections have been postponed to September – October, 2012. According to officials the dates for the panchayat polls, while not yet decided, have been shifted from the earlier stated period of April to later this year and was decided in a meeting of the state legislator’s  body meeting held a few days ago. The primary reason for the re-scheduling of the dates for the panchayat polls is the state’s obligation and desire to provide 50% seat reservations to women candidates in panchayat bodies.
The announcement made by the state government that it will henceforth reserve half the seats of in the panchayat bodies for women has caused the delimitation process of panchayat wards to be revisited. This delimitation of the wards, officials inform, will take much time. Not only is there to be a delimitation there will also be an increase in the number of panchayats per ward to enable 50% reservation for women. This, officials inform, implies that all wards are to have an even number of panchayat members so that half of them are women and the other half men.
So in panchayat wards where there are 5 panchayat members this is to be increased to 6 members making the total number of panchayat members in the ward an even number where half of them are male and the other half, female.
Earlier the issue before the state government was whether 50% of the total number of panchayat members elected to panchayat bodies in the poll are required to be women to fulfill the government’s commitment to its promise to the people. However it was finally decided that for the commitment to 50% women’s reservation to be fulfilled half the panchayat members in a panchayat ward would be required to be female.
There are a total of 163 gram panchayat units and 891 gram panchayat wards in the state. this number is expected to increase when the delimitation is over. In fact officials informed that there will be an increase in the number when the number of women are adjusted to make the total even. The increase in the number is not yet ascertained but is expected to be between 150 to 200 seats. There are already some panchayat wards where the number is even, it is informed.
This further implies that all parties contesting the panchayat polls would have to field equal number of male and female candidates; further the candidates have to be equally spread out among the panchayat wards or constituencies. Sikkim will be the first state to have half its elected panchayat members female. While a couple of other states have also made the same commitment and announcement Sikkim will be the first among them to go for the panchayat polls. A few years ago the SDF government was the first to announce an increase from 33% reservation to 40% reservation for women in panchayat bodies.

On the other hand the formulation of urban local bodies has also cut into the rural areas and into panchayat areas. This too will require some delimitation but only in these areas where the demarcation of urban local bodies has had an impact.