The voters of one-time "mini-England" are in dire straits. Give us our due and only then shall we vote, is their ultimatum.

BY JANAKI MURALI

DH NEWS SERVICE, KOLAR GOLD FIELDS:

The rains brought some relief to the hot and sultry day, otherwise the arid expanse of miles and miles of dry fields -- frondless coconut palms, abandoned tomato fields, fallow ragi farms -- would have been a depressing sight.

Unemployment, serpentine queues for water, starvation deaths, are only some of the problems that people in Kolar Gold Fields have to deal with every day.

Only around 120 kms from the hi-tech city of Bangalore, the erstwhile British colony of KGF is a ghost town, only a semblance of the bustling township it was even a few years ago. The tree-lined boulevards are still there, the quarters of the Bharat Gold Mines Limited still exist, but the mines are silent, only a couple of security guards stand watch over eerie sinks and rotting pipes.

Around 3,500 employees are still on the rolls of BGML, who have not received any wages for 40 months. To focus attention on their plight, they and their families which account for nearly 12,000 people, have decided to boycott the coming elections. Says Narasimhan, who still has his BGML ID card, "We are unskilled workers and have nowhere to go." His friend Krishnan butts in, "Do you know why I keep this badge, so that if I die on the road somewhere, my family will get some compensation."

Sarath Kumar studying in sixth standard has just finished his exams, but only because his parents paid up the fees, for which they borrowed money. "The schools sent back the children, saying they could not write the exams unless we paid up the fees," adds another person.

Women have to travel about two kilometres for water. "We never had any water problems as long as the mines were functioning, as we always had underground water," they say.

While those still on the BGML payroll have no other alternative but to wait for some relief, the others in KGF fill the trains to Bangalore in search of employment. Some of them work as daily wage earners and some are labourers. Its hard to find two meals a day and many families have loans ranging from Rs one to two lakhs. Their daughters' marriages are on hold, for want of funds for their dowries. Water fights, school dropouts, juvenile delinquency and growing rowdism have all contributed to the desperation that is palpable on the residents' faces. Pilferage and thefts from the mines are common and union leaders speak about stopping lorry loads of stolen goods from the mines.

Says Mr M Ravindrachari, Joint Secretary of the BGML Supervisors' Association, "We are boycotting the elections, demanding that the High Court ruling of September 26 be implemented. If our demands are met before the elections, we will vote." Adds R Parthiban, General Secretary of the BGML Labour Association, INTUC, "Nearly 70 people have died of starvation deaths here."

The Karnataka High Court, while it upheld the order passed by the Centre in 2001 for closing down BGML, had recommended to the government to extend the Voluntary Retirement Scheme to those employees who had not opted for it; asked the Centre to transfer the official quarters, where the employees were staying at present, to the employees and fixed various slabs for sale-cum-transfer of quarters to employees; and that a one-time compensation of Rs 5,000 be paid to each employee.

M Bakthavatsalam, the AIADMK MLA for the KGF reserved constituency in the dissolved Assembly, is contesting the elections for the fourth time and refutes the claim that the BGML employees are boycotting the polls. "Only those affiliated to the CPM, CPI and the JD(S) are calling for the boycott, nobody is interested in boycotting the elections," he says. When asked about the starvation deaths and the water problems, he says, "Not one person has died of starvation. Mostly they were sick."

He further adds that he has distributed rice and sewing machines to the people. Water was supplied in tankers daily and a community borewell dug.