Sonepat: Juan-1 villagers boycott voting
Sonepat, November 13
Residents of Juan-1 village in the district refrained from voting as their long-pending demand of draining of water from their agricultural land had not been met.
The villagers had been staging a dharna for the past 23 days at the mini secretariat.
There are two panchayats in Juan village – Juan-1 and Juan-2. There are over 4,600 voters in the Juan-1 panchayat while around 1,800 of them in the Juan-2 panchayat. Juan-1 villagers participated in the zila parishad and the block samiti member election held on November 9, but boycotted today’s sarpanch/panch elections. There were 14 wards in the Juan-1 panchayat and the post of sarpanch was again reserved for the Scheduled Caste, this time. To participate in the elections, 23 had filed their nomination for the post of panch while four had filed nominations for the post of sarpanch, but all participants had withdrawn their nominations on the last day of the withdrawal in support of the protesters of their own village.
Former sarpanch Dharambir Singh said approximately 500 acres was waterlogged due to the poor drainage system. The water of seven nearby villages Moi Majri, Rambhana, Chatiya, Sitawli, Kurali, Dubheta, Tewri was collected in their agricultural land, he said.
DC Lalit Sewach said, eight pump sets had been set up in Juan-1 village to drain out the water from the fields, but they staged a dharna just to put pressure on the administration.
