New Delhi:

About three decades ago, more than a thousand farmers in Tamil Nadu, dissatisfied with government policies, filed nominations for a constituency in the Lok Sabha polls to draw attention to their grievances.

This was also the only time that the Electoral Commission (EC) had to accommodate an unexpected 1,033 candidates from Modakurichi in Erode District by issuing “ballot books” instead of traditional “ballot papers”.

However, farmers from Punjab, who have been camping on the state’s border with Haryana for nearly two months, believe electoral politics is not the way to go.

The farmers started marching towards Delhi on February 13, demanding legal guarantees of minimum support price (MSP) for their crops and farm loan waivers, among others, but were stopped by security personnel at the Haryana border.

Farmers have been camping at Shambhu and Khanauri points between Punjab and Haryana since then.

All India Congress member Krishna Prasad said farmers are committed to opposing the BJP government and its policies.

“But we are not planning to take this (election) route. At the mahapanchayat in Delhi, we declared our stand against the BJP and exposed its policies. We are united in this cause,” Prasad told The Hindu industry trust.

Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh member Abhimanyu Kohar said: “We have been guarding the borders and keeping distance from electoral politics since February 13. We believe that all political parties support farmers when they are in opposition but when in power, they all become Pro-corporate, anti-farmer.”

When 1,033 farmers from Modakurichi filed nominations for the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission had to print “newspaper-like ballot papers” and deploy ballot boxes more than four feet high. Voting hours have also been extended to accommodate the long list of candidates.

In that election, DMK’s Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan won, defeating ADMK’s RN Kittusamy.

All candidates except Jagadisan, Kittusamy and independents lost their deposits. While 88 candidates received no votes, 158 candidates cast only one vote each.

The 1996 general election also saw the largest number of candidates, 13,000. Subsequently, the EC increased the margin amount from Rs 500 to Rs 10,000. This apparently helped reduce the number of contestants per seat in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections to 8.75.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)