The traditional panchayat was an informal council of village elders, which settled disputes and had no legal standing and no fixed membership.
The statutory gram panchayat is different: an elected body under the Punjab Panchayati Raj Act, with a sarpanch, reserved seats for women and Scheduled Castes, and control of the village common land, the development funds and a set of local functions.
The 73rd constitutional amendment of 1993 gave panchayats their present standing. Punjab's panchayat elections are fought hard and expensively, on party lines in practice though not formally, and the sarpanch's control of the shamlat auction and of scheme funds is why.
Reserved seats for women are frequently occupied in name by a woman whose husband exercises the function, which is documented across India and is called sarpanch pati.
Alongside the statutory body the informal panchayat persists, and it makes decisions with no legal basis, including on marriage, caste and social boycott, that are sometimes enforced with real consequences.
Punjab has around thirteen thousand gram panchayats and polls to them are held across the state on a single day, which makes it one of the largest exercises the state administration runs in any year.
The shamlat, the common land, is the largest asset most panchayats hold, and a third of it is reserved by law for Scheduled Caste cultivators in the annual auction. That reservation is what the Zameen Prapti campaign is about.
Panchayat elections in Punjab are fought hard and are frequently contested in court. The sarpanchi is the first rung of the state's whole political system.