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But not Tohra man in Tohra
WSN Network
 TOHRA:
The village
Tohra represents the decline of a political stalwart and his legacy
so clearly that only the politically blind will fail to learn the
lessons, but then power or even the hope for it has been known to
blind many. Bahadur Singh, allied with the Congress and opposed all
through by the late Gurcharan Singh Tohra, won the panchayat
election along with other candidates backed by him.
While Bahadur
Singh is all set to be elected sarpanch this time, in the last
elections in 2003, Tohra had ensured his protégé Satwinder Singh's
victory, beating Bahadur Singh. But here is the bon mot: Bahadur
Singh was this time supported by Tohra's "successors" – his adopted
daughter Kuldeep Kaur and her son Harinder Pal. The group thus won
four seats of the seven in the panchayat. Kuldeep Kaur called it a
sign of the "changing times".
Times however
had not changed much for some. Tohra's widow Joginder Kaur, had
backed the Satwinder group publicly. In 2003, Tohra's plea for
unanimous choice of panchayat didn't work and his man Satwinder won
merely by 80 votes. For 20 years before that, the sarpanch had been
elected through "unanimous choice". erhaps the wisdom remained the
preserve of Tohra's 75-year-old driver Didar Singh who said the
Akali leader's successors had failed to carry the legacy forward.
"He once ruled the whole of Punjab, today he seems to have been
forgotten," he said.
28
May,
2008
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