Families sundered, a life lost

Siblings are contesting against each other in many wards, while in one brothers are engaged in a proxy fight, having pitted their wives to slug it out.

One reason for such bitterness has been non-availability of candidates for wards of different reservation categories.

While such dearth of  candidates has given rise to migrant candidates, the shortage has also created  intense debate within families with eligible candidates as to who should contest.

One such battlefield is in Eradetthinahalli In Koolahalli Grama Panchayat of the taluk. The contest for the ward reserved for Scheduled Woman is between the wives of Ramappa and Lakshmappa.

Split in family

Till a week ago, the joint family living under one roof was united, and the brothers were extremely fond of each other. Sadly, this is not the case any more.

For the last two days, the brothers are not talking to each other. Nor do their wives, Durugamma and Lakkamma are incommunicado to each other.

The harmony that used to mark the family is gone, perhaps forever.

Ramappa’s wife Durugamma, sponsored by the Congress brazens it out. “We are all fine. Politics cannot ruin our relationships. We will be in future as we were in the past.”
Lakshmamma, wife of Lakshmappa, does not echo her sister-in-law’s sentiments.

“For the past few days we have stopped talking to each other. What is in store in the future, only God knows,” she says.

For the ‘general’ seat in the same village, there is a fratricidal fight in the offing between Hanumanthappa and Honnappa.

A section of the community decided to elect Honnappa as the consensus candidate.
When it became known that he was being sponsored by the Congress, another section in the community egged on the elder sibling, Hanumanthappa, persuading him to contest as a BJP-supported candidate.

A suicide too

Such is the intensity that the election has engendered in the villages, that underhand tactics, common to more important elections have entered the GP poll arena.

Sunkappa of Siriwara Panchayat in Bellary District filed his nomination papers for one of the reserved wards on April 24, and even began the campaign spending a considerable amount of money.

But on the last day for withdrawing nominations, Thursday, he had a rude shock, when he found that his nomination had been withdrawn by ‘somebody’.

Humilated

While Sunkappa is plain sad about what befell him, Obanna of Kanthapura in Hosadurga Taluk of Davangere District could not take the humilation of ‘forced’ withdrawal of his nomination. He swallowed poison and died in a hospital when he was forced by some people in the village to withdraw his nomination on Thursday.

Obanna’s wife, Suvarnamma has in her complaint to police named five men of the village as being responsible for husband’s death as they humiliated him by forcing him to withdraw his nomination.

Police have arrested the Obanna’s detractors.