India

Padam Singh Wins Sarpanch Post in Newly Formed Chachore Village, Symbolic Return to Ancestral Home

By Parul Kulshrestha

In Rajasthan’s Barmer district, 77‑year‑old Padam Singh was elected the first sarpanch of the newly created village of Chachore on October 24, receiving 950 votes to 612 for his nearest rival, Dhana Ram. Padam Singh, who still uses the name Padam Singh Chhachro, is a member of the Sodha family, a prominent Hindu landowning clan that left their ancestral home in Chhachro, Sindh, Pakistan, in 1972. The family had been politically influential in Pakistan; his great‑grandfather Thakur Akhiraj Singh Sodha served in the Sindh Assembly in 1937, and his son Thakur Lal Singh also held a seat. Padam’s older brother, Laxman Singh, was Deputy Minister of Railways in Pakistan from 1962 to 1965 under Field Marshal Ayub Khan and was the only Hindu minister in that cabinet. After the 1965 India‑Pakistan war and growing suspicion of minority leaders, Laxman Singh was arrested in 1970 on spying charges. During the 1971 war, Laxman and his brothers reportedly guided Indian troops into Chhachro, an operation led by Sawai Bhawani Singh, the titular Maharaja of Jaipur. The village and surrounding territory were returned to Pakistan after the Shimla Agreement in July 1972, and the Sodha family migrated to India, leaving behind 1.2 lakh bighas of land that was declared enemy property. They first settled in Chohtan and later in Bawdi Kala, initially living in tents before rebuilding as farmers. Laxman Singh served as pradhan of the Chohtan Panchayat Samiti in India. In 2024, the Rajasthan government established Chachore as a revenue village from Bawdi Kala, largely populated by people displaced from Chhachro who felt a strong connection to their ancestral homeland. Padam Singh’s election as sarpanch is seen by his family as a symbolic reclamation of their homeland. “It reminded me of home,” he told The Indian Express. “I want to make Chhachro a better place.”