Nagpur: Gram Panchayat poll vote to fetch incentives for 105 Gadchiroli villages

NAGPUR: In a bid to reward 105 villages in sensitive areas of Gadchiroli district, residents of which defied Naxal threat and participated in last month’s gram panchayat elections, Gadchiroli collector Dipak Singla has sent a proposal to the state government for granting special incentives to them.
The proposal was sent to state home minister Anil Deshmukh, who had earlier suggested rewarding such villages for coming forward to cast vote in the Naxal stronghold.
Deshmukh had earlier lauded the spontaneous response of the local population, along with the initiatives of the district administration and district police, for managing to conduct the polls in the cluster of seven villages under Jhaveli Khurd gram panchayat after 57 years of it’s formation in the remote Etapalli taluka, which was earlier known as the den of the Naxals.
He had then stated that villages like Jhaveli Khurd must get incentive pay package for local development as reward for stepping out to vote and dismissing the Naxal threats.
Deshmukh had underlined the fact that more than 80% turnout was witnessed at 920 booths, including 177 hyper-sensitive ones, in both the phases of the gram panchayat polls.
Singla said list of the 105 villages from 12 talukas of the district was sent to the home minister to help the hamlets get funds for development. “The names of the villages where polling percentage was encouraging was sent to the HM. Many of these villages are in remote areas.