Hit by floods, Dhakka Basti residents to boycott polls

The voters of Dhakka Basti in Gatta Mundi Kasu village of Lohian Khas block in Shahkot have decided to unanimously boycott the panchayat elections slated for December 14. The villagers of Dhakka Basti will not vote for any candidate, across parties, during the Block Samiti and Zila Parishad elections to be held tomorrow. The reason, villagers say, is the constant apathy meted out to Dhakka Basti -- a dwelling comprising mostly labourers and workers which has repeatedly been ravaged by successive floods, including this year.

Dhakka Basti dweller Jaswinder Singh, a labourer by profession, says, "Asi maare bande aan. Sadi koi gal nahi sunda, ya daba dinde. Votan lain aa jande, mur ke koi puchda nahi. Asi eka kita, asi nahi vote pani (We are poor, no one listens to us. They come to seek votes and later completely forget us. This time, we have decided together, we will not vote.)

"We had decided to opt for NOTA this time. But since it's a ballot paper vote, not a single person from our basti will go to vote tomorrow. The village has unanimously decided not to vote," he says.

A part of the Gatta Mundi Kasu village in Shahkot, Dhakka Basti has a population of a little over 400 people and has 210 votes.

In the meeting of the villagers where the declaration regarding unanimous boycott of poll was made today, villager Raj Kaur said with folded hands, "These leaders made so many promises to us. We battled the 2019 floods. In the 2023 floods, they gave us repeated assurances, but left us in a lurch. And again in 2025, we suffered. Today, how can we trust these sarpanches, officials and leaders? This is our village's unanimous decision that we will not go to vote for anyone. Because we face dhakka (apathy) from everywhere. We were betrayed every time we trusted.”

The villagers have also demanded five-marla plots for relocating elsewhere, fed up with the the repeated ravages of floods. Said Jaswinder, "At Dhakka Basti, we are all poor. We live right by the river. Every time there is a flood, there's large-scale destruction. Houses collapse. We are all labourers, we can't buy new land. We are scared of what floods next year may do. We've kept a demand that we be allocated 5-marla plot of land away from the river."