The tenure of those bodies is set to expire.
A notification has been issued by the West Bengal state government that administrators would be appointed for the 34% seats which the TMC had won uncontested in the last three-tier Panchayat election but a final decision of which is pending at the Supreme Court.
The notification, issued by the state Panchayat and Rural affairs department on Thursday said that respective district magistrates would be administrators for zilla parishads where as sub divisional officers (SDO) and block development officials (BDO) would be in charge of panchayat samitis and gram panchayats, respectively.
State Panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee said that appointing administrators had become inevitable. “The tenure of these rural bodies would be completed soon and since a final order from the Supreme Court is awaited, appointing administrators was the only way out,” Mukherjee said.
In the last three-tier Panchayat polls in West Bengal, of the total 58,692 seats, the ruling Trinamool Congress won 20,076 seats uncontested. The TMC won 203 of the 825 zilla parishad seats, 3,059 of the 9,217 panchayat samity seats and 16,814 out of the 48,650 gram panchayat seats, uncontested, which had been a record in the history of panchayat elections in the state. The previous highest record had been in 2003 when the ruling CPI(M) had won 11 per cent seats, uncontested.
Sources said that even if one seat of a zilla parishad, panchayat samity and gram panchayat had been won uncontested, there needed to be an administrator because the tenure would expire between the end of August and mid- September, 2018.
The Supreme Court, in an interim order had directed the State Election Commission (SEC) on May 10 not to declare the names of the TMC candidates in 20,067 seats who have won uncontested as candidates of the Opposition could not allegedly file their nomination.
While the apex court had expressed its concern over the huge number of seats won uncontested, the West Bengal State Election Commission, in its defence, had cited the example of Harayana, Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh where 51, 67 and 27.6 per cent of seats, respectively were won uncontested in the panchayat elections. The SEC lawyer said that they could not help if Opposition parties could not pitch candidates in the polls and that the SEC had taken prompt steps to redress complaints whenever it received any and had even held repolls.
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