Kavitkheda, Sharifpurwadi residents go ahead with boycott

AURANGABAD: Residents of Kavitkheda, which falls under the assembly constituency of speaker Haribhau Bagde and the Lok Sabha Constituency of BJP state president Raosaheb Danve, joined Sharifpurwadi village of Gangapur tehsil in a boycott of the polls. Gangapur tehsil is being represented by BJP MLA, Prashant Bamb.
Residents of Kavitkheda, who said they have been waiting for a road to their village since the Independence, had announced a boycott of the polls this year.Officials from the local administration had tried to convince them to vote, but failed. The village is about 35 kms from here, along the Mumbai-Kolkata national highway.
Villagers had even erected a banner along the highway, declaring that their representatives had failed to keep important promises. They had also refused to allow candidates to hold political campaigns in their village.
Kavithkheda, with a population of about 2,000 people, has been demanding the construction of a 3.5-km stretch of tar road for decades. The village has about 500 registered voters.
In Sharifpurwadi, Aurangabad district collector and returning officer, Uday Choudhari, said despite best efforts by officials to convince villagers to vote, a boycott continued.
"Of all the people's delegations that had warned of a boycott in the region, the residents of Sharifpurwadi were the only ones we couldn't convince," he said.