PEDDAPALLI/ MAHBUBNAGAR: Development creating confusion. That’s how one can describe a peculiar situation caused by a CC road that was laid in the Gollapalli village in Peddapalli district.  

Thanks to this road, Gollapalli is divided into two parts, with one side being merged with Raghavapur gram panchyat and the other went to Bandamalli which was merged with Peddapalli Municipality.
While the villagers have already been inconvenienced in many aspects, the problem is not with the division of the village into parts nor with their merger with other panchayat. With the panchayat elections around the corner, voters in only one half of the village will be able to exercise their franchise while those in the other part will be deprived of their voting right.

“Raghavapur and Gollpalli now come under Raghavapur panchyat. There were originally 415 voters in the Gollpalli village. After the bifurcation 290 of those voters are eligible to vote in Raghavapur panchyat. However, there is no clarification on the remaining 125 voters whose residences are now under Bandampalli.

When contacted, the authorities said they have no instructions from higher officials on the issue. Former Raghavapur sarpanch A Rama Swamy, said: “All the villagers are unhappy with this prevailing situation. The entire Gollapalli village should have been merged either with Raghavapur panchayat or Peddapalli Municipality to such confusion.”

Giving incentives not new practice, says TRS leader

Stating that giving incentives to villages which elect their sarpanchas unanimously is a not new practice, TRS party’s Mahbubnagar district president Badmi Shivakumar said the same method was adopted by the previous governments.

Shivakumar said that the main objective of the TRS government to announce similar incentives ahead of the panchayat elections is to ‘reduce the election expenditure’.“These incentives will allotted from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) of local MLAs,” he explained.