De-reserve, or face boycott, say Kovilpatti residents

The residents met at Kaliamman temple at Sankaralingapuram, coming under ward no.5, on Sunday night and discussed about their participation in the up-coming local body election. 

Kannayiram, one of the village elders, said that as per rules the reserved ward must be fixed on a rotation basis and once in 10 years there should be a change in every ward. 

Their ward continues to be a reserved one for 25 years consecutively and even in the past 15 years when the civic polls were held regularly their ward saw no changes. In this election they had hoped to see some change and their ward to be de-reserved. But once again to the residents utter disappointment their ward was declared as reserved. 

“The major problem with the reserved constituency is that persons from one particular community get elected continuously and owing to it others do not get proper representation. Hence the government and the State Election Commission must understand our issues and must make the ward a general seat,” said the village elder. “If government and State Election Commission do not de-reserve our ward, we will boycott the election said Kannayiram. Representatives of all the major political parties participated in the meeting.