Scrapping previous govt’s moves: MVA to revert APMC, civic council poll procedure

The Uddhav Thackeray-led government on Wednesday scrapped two key decisions taken by former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, pertaining to elections to the Agriculture

The Uddhav Thackeray-led government on Wednesday scrapped two key decisions taken by former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, pertaining to elections to the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMC) and municipal councils.

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The state cabinet has decided to issue fresh ordinances to revert to older procedures in both these polls.

The previous government had amended the Maharashtra Agricultural Produce and Marketing (Development and Regulation) Act, 1963, in 2017 to give farmers the right to elect the members and chairperson of APMC in their area, where they sell their produce.

The government will issue an ordinance to cancel this provision and go back to the older procedure where members of gram panchayats, multi-purpose co-operative societies and agriculture credit societies, elected the APMC board.

The Fadnavis government had also re-introduced direct elections to presidents of municipal bodies and nagar panchayats in 2016. The system was earlier implemented in the state from 2002 to 2006 before being withdrawn.

The MVA will now revert to the system where elected councillors voted the president of their municipal council.

There are 305 APMCs in the state and 295 municipal councils. The APMCs have 21-member boards that are elected every five years while the municipal councils oversee civic governance in towns and are represented by councillors, who are also elected every five years.

Both these electoral changes were seen as a bid by the BJP-led government to break the stronghold of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)-Congress in the co-operative sector and local bodies. With the NCP-Congress back in power, they plan to go back to earlier electoral methods, which they see as beneficial for their rural and semi-urban party base.

“It is not feasible to allow every farmer right to vote in the APMC board elections, it makes the cost of holding these polls too expensive. At least 38 APMCs had approached us saying they cannot afford to hold these elections. The last government had a political agenda when they introduced this change. They called it an electoral reform but it was not feasible on the ground,’’ said co-operation minister Balasaheb Patil.

Patil argued that the older system, which had worked fine for more than five decades had also ensured farmer representation through gram panchayats and co-operative societies participation.

The minister added that the BJP’s decision to introduce direct election to municipal councils had led to complications as in several local bodies the majority of the elected councillors belonged to one party but the president represented another party.

The BJP government introduced the direct election in May 2016 ahead of the elections of nearly 195 such bodies, to make the civic administration more “efficient” and ``accountable’’. But, more importantly, it also gave BJP dividends as it won maximum posts of these directly elected presidents in the polls held later that year.

“NCP knows very well what is electorally beneficial to them and hence this push back is on expected lines. The BJP had tried to make inroads and succeeded to a large degree with municipal council polls. The NCP will now use this power to win maximum of these bodies now in the upcoming polls,’’ said Nitin Birmal, a political analyst.