The infrastructural gap in urban and rural areas of Chandigarh remains a key election issue this time.
There are two faces to the City Beautiful — one is urban with unique architecture, beautiful parks, markets while the other is rural areas, with dispiriting shanties and dilapidated infrastructure.The disparity in rural and urban development in Chandigarh is apparent and remains unaddressed so far.The urban poor of Chandigarh, who lives in colonies and villages are suffering due to scarcity of clean water, unhygienic conditions, potholed roads, irregular electricity supply, crumbling healthcare and education sector, issues like illegal structures, extension of lal dora, village buildings bylaws, among others.
Even as the city continued to develop, there is hardly any development seen in the rural areas of Chandigarh.Given the current scenario, the Chandigarh election arena has also been witnessing heated debates over the divide in urban and rural development in Chandigarh. The urban and rural disparity remains a key issue for the candidates in Chandigarh’s ballot tussle.
The rural areas comprising of villages and colonies in Chandigarh holds the key to city’s elections. Comprised of around 3.50 lakh voters out of the total 6.13 lakh voters, the rural voters in villages and colonies will play a vital role in deciding the fate of candidates in the poll fray.
According to the Chandigarh Election Department, the maximum number of voters are in Manimajra. It has more than 48,000 voters while Dhanas has around 28,000 voters. The villages/colonies, namely Ram Darbar, Bapudham colony, Burail, Kejheri, Dadumajra, Mauli Jagran, Maloya among others have a major chunk of voters. Each of these colony/village has more than 10,000 voters.
On the other hand, Sector 38 has 17,086 voters, the maximum number in urban areas followed by 16,383 voters in Sector 45.Interestingly, the major political parties are pulling out all the stops to woo the voters of the rural areas of Chandigarh. Everyday, padyatras, public meetings, rallies and nukkad meetings are organised by the parties in villages and colonies here with an aim to connect with the voters.The four strong contenders from the city’s lok Sabha seat, Congress’ Pawan Kumar Bansal, BJP’s Kirron Kher, AAP’s Gul Panag and BSP’s Jannat Jahan have been reaching out to the rural voters’ everyday and their poll promises arelargely focussed on development of villages and colonies.
Also, the voters in rural areas have been coming out in large numbers to exercise their franchise in the past elections. During the lok Sabha elections of 2009, 68 per cent of colony dwellers cast their votes as compared to 64 per cent in the urban areas.
In Chandigarh, the highest electors turn out was 66.85 percent recorded in the year 1971 here. The voting percentage was recorded 65.51 per cent in 2009 lok Sabha polls.The Union Territory of Chandigarh, which is the common capital of Punjab and Haryana, has a population of nearly 11.9 lakh, with a voter strength of 6,13,939, including 3,32,888 male and 2,81,051 female voters.