Balurghat: Around 3,000 residents of six villages in Ajmotpur gram panchayat near Gangarampur have said they will boycott polls to protest the absence of a proper road, power, health centre and drinking water.
The villages — Doara, Koijuri, Kanipukur, Khatangpara, Bhuniapara and Monohali — in Tapan block come under Gangarampur Assembly constituency which goes to polls on April 17.
“There is no health centre in our village. For treatment, we have to go to Tapan block health centre, but to reach there, there is no proper road,” said Indosias Soren, a resident of Bhuniapara,The Telegraph reported.
The villages together have over 1,000 voters, majority of whom belong to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.
Even a 5km mud road that leads from Monohali to Ajmotpur has been in a bad state for years. “The stretch is being repaired once in a while. There is no initiative on the part of the local panchayat and political leaders to construct a concrete road,” said a resident of one of the villages.
Hirasuddin Mondal of Doara village says in the absence of electricity, people are facing problems during the summer. “Leaders of different political parties come to us before the Assembly and Parliamentary elections and assure us of development. But nothing has happened,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter for us whether the Assembly polls are held or not. We have lost interest in the elections. From our experiences, it can be said that polls would not change our life. So, we have taken a unanimous decision to boycott the coming Assembly polls,” said Mondal.
The villagers have squarely blamed the local administration and sitting Trinamul MLA Satyen Roy for their plight. “ It is dangerous, especially for children and the elderly people, to walk on the road. In the past couple of months, there were several major and minor accidents,” said another resident of Kanipukur, Khejuri Murmu.
Supporting the demand, Congress candidate Goutam Das said: “The sitting Trinamul MLA had done nothing to end the predicament of the villagers. The concrete road is their minimum requirement.”
The MLA and the Trinamul candidate, Roy, said he had not promised to fulfil the demands of the villagers in a single term as the legislator. “A single tenure is not enough for me to solve every problem. Oppositions parties like the Left Front, Congress and the BJP are indulging in politics that is forcing villagers to boycott the polling,” he said.