Haryana village boycotts LS polls

Kaithal, Apr 10: Majority of voters in a village in Kaithal district of

today boycotted the Lok Sabha polls in protest against inclusion of their village in a new Assembly constituency in the last delimitation.

Villagers of Kakaut boycotted the polls as they protested against the inclusion of their village in Kalayat Assembly constituency in the last delimitation in stead of Kaithal Assembly constituency, official sources said.

Kalayat is located about 45 km away from the village while Kaithal was only about 12 km away. So it should have been a part of Kaithal assembly constituency, the villagers rued. They said that Kakaut was one of the four Gujjar community dominated villages in the area, the other three being Sampli Kheri, Dhons and Kathwad. However, the other three villages were merged in Kaithal constituency, Kakaut was made a part of Kalayat constituency, they said.

District Election Officer cum Deputy Commissioner N K Solanki who visited the village along with S P Kuldeep Yadav tried hard to convince the villagers to exercise their franchise but their efforts went in vain. Congress candidate for Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat Naveen Jindal reached the village and hardly had he started speaking, the villagers started hooting, forcing him to cut short his speech and leave.

Leaders of some other parties too had to face a similar situation. Only 16 of total 3,600 voters of the village exercised in the franchise soon after the polling started, official sources said.

PTI CORR VJ NKB