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36The State government initially declined to ratify the act. It was strongly critical of the factthat several mandatory provisions were being imposed on States by the Centre, therebyusurping the autonomy of the former in deciding how much they should or should notdevolve to the panchayats. As the Minister-in-Charge for Panchayats and Land Reforms,Dr. Surja kanta Mishra, remarked on the floor of the Assembly, the Centre is ‘steamrolling’ States in the name of uniformity. (as quoted in Kumar, 2002). 22 On April 13, 1994he presented the Bill in the Assembly for consideration.Interestingly, there was not much debate on the substantive aspects of the Bill per se.Rather the Opposition, mainly the Congress legislators, focussed on what was left out ofthe proposed Bill, namely, modification of the procedure for counting votes at the pollingstations. Indeed, the whole tenor of the debates was dominated by arguments andcounterarguments on this issue. Several opposition members, for instance Atish Sinha andSaugata Roy, alluded to electoral malpractices in course of counting at polling cum countingcentres. Expressing deep reservations about electoral irregularities, Roy stated, “Countingstarts late, by then CPI(M) armed guards (emphasis added) literally take over the pollingbooths. They…quite often prevail upon the presiding officers to declare results in favourof their candidates. There are hundreds of such instances in the State…” (as quoted inKumar, 2002). A mention was made by him of the evaluation report on panchayats byNirmal Mukarji and D Bandyopadhyay that takes note of this problem by stating that ‘Thecounting of votes in the polling stations creates problems, especially if the contest is aclose one. Under pressure, irregularities tend to be committed while counting and in thedeclaration of results” (Mukarji and Bandyopadhyay, 1993, pp.20-21). Leaving this issueun-addressed, the Opposition felt, constituted one major lacuna of the amendment bill. Asa remedial measure, it would be more appropriate, they suggested, if the booth-wise countingprocedure is replaced by centralised counting of votes at the block or sub-divisional level.In response, the Minister noted that the proposal for modification, if accepted, wouldamount to `setting up a bad precedent’ and therefore could not be accepted. Instead, theState Election Commission in consultation with the State government could make somealternative arrangements.Similarly, the Minister-in-Charge did not accept the proposal for direct election ofthe Gram Panchayat Pradhan by stating that, “If he is directly elected then he cannot beremoved by any other means”. Thus, electoral procedures, and by extension the allegednexus between panchayats and the CPI(M) party, invited the most vociferous responses