Kannur  :

In 1949 August, Radio Moscow aired the name of a tiny village in Kannur suburbs in a news bulletin for writing a new chapter in the history of democracy. The village panchayat there was elected through voting and for the first time in India’s history a communist local government came to power through electoral process.

That is the history of Chirakkal panchayat, the capital of the erstwhile Chirakkal dynasty, and a major hub of the handloom textile industry in Kerala. The polls were held on August 16, about a month after the panchayat was formed in July 1949.

It was then part of the Madras state. The communist party came to power in Chirakkal at a time when it was banned in the country and party leaders were mostly operating from underground fearing arrests. Unlike today, there was no ballot paper and votes were taken by counting the raised hands of the voters. As per the existing law in the Madras state, only those who can read and write and have completed 21 years of age, were eligible for voting.

The government had appointed the local village officer Chengalath Nanu Menon as the polling officer and the election was held at Raja’s Higher Elementary School, where nearly 600 voters gathered, according to the panchayat records. While the Congress had nine candidates, the communists could field only seven, as two candidates refused to contest. Though the Congress objected to the communists contesting the elections claiming there were criminal cases against them, the police or the complainants could not provide any evidence and the polling officer allowed their candidatures.

The communists romped home by winning seven seats while the Congress candidates bagged five. The next day the panchayat council elected communist leaders K P Narayanan as president and T C Madhavan as vice president. Since the panchayat didn’t have a building of its own, it functioned out of a rented building.

Senior CPM leader and former MLA M Prakashan master hails the event as “unparalleled in the history of Indian democracy”. Barring 1988 elections, the panchayat has always retained that tradition. “The communist party came to power for the first time in a panchayat in the country when the party was banned and that was why it was a big news even in the Soviet Union and the Radio Moscow aired it,” he said. “And we keep that tradition alive.”

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City / TNN / October 14th, 2015