Jaisalmer: At 76, Padam Singh Sodha has been elected the first sarpanch of Chachro, a newly created revenue village in Rajasthan’s Barmer district, sealing a homecoming of sorts for families who fled Pakistan’s Chachro after the 1971 Indo-Pak war and kept the name alive for decades in exile.Sodha won the panchayat election by 338 votes, polling 950 against his nearest rival Dhana Ram’s 612 on Oct 24. A former sarpanch of Bavdi Kalan from 2005 to 2010, he now leads a village whose very name carries the memory of an ancestral homeland across the border.“I have become Padam Singh Chachro once again,” he said after the results, as villagers marked the victory with traditional songs linked to the old princely-era Chachro and he fought back tears.Sodha’s personal history is closely tied to the 1971 India-Pakistan war. On Feb 8, 1971, he and more than 300 members of his community left their ancestral village of Chachro in Pakistan’s Tharparkar district of Sindh and settled permanently at Bavdi Kalan in Barmer. Later that year, Sodha, his cousin Laxman Singh and 11 other local men guided Indian Army’s 10 Para battalion led by then Lt Col Bhawani Singh of the Jaipur ex-royal family through terrain they knew intimately, helping the unit advance into Pakistan and capture Chachro on Dec 7. Sodha even hoisted the Tricolour atop his ancestral haveli in Pakistan.Pakistan accused the Sodha brothers of espionage, announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh each for their capture—dead or alive—and seized around 1.2 lakh bighas of their land as “enemy property.”The captured Pak territory was later returned under the Simla Agreement, but Dec 7 remains a defining date for Sodha, who says his commitment to stand with Indian Army “against Pakistan” remains undiminished.His son Pushpendra Singh Sodha cited a wider political lineage, noting that Sodha’s grandfather Lal Singh had links to Sindh Assembly and later served in Ayub Khan’s era, while cousin Laxman Singh went on to become pradhan of Chauhtan in Barmer district.Bavdi Kalan has recently been reclassified as a separate revenue village with the creation of a new village, Chachro. Previously, Bavdi Kalan Gram Panchayat had 2,084 voters, but 362 of them have now moved to Chachro. Rajasthan govt approved the new revenue village last year after residents proposed reviving the historic name.Spread across about 100 hectares, the Indian Chachro has a population of 362 and lies roughly 12 km from the international border—closer than its Pakistani namesake, which is about 48 km from the boundary and nearly 60 km away from the new settlement. For Pak-displaced families, the new Chachro is an administrative identity—and a restored one.
1971 war-era guide now leads new Rajasthan village as sarpanch | Jaipur News
