The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Changes in village administration likely

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 07, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Changes in village administration likely

By B. Chandrashekhar

ANANTAPUR, JAN. 6. The State Government is contemplating changes in the village-level administration by scrapping the existing village (panchayat) secretary posts and transforming them into two categories -- revenue and development secretaries.

In all likelihood, a decision over either adopting a new system or continuing with the existing set-up will be taken up by January 26. Highly placed sources told The Hindu here on Wednesday that an expert committee of six senior District Panchayat Officers (DPOs) had already prepared a draft bill for changing the existing village administrative set-up. The proposed changes, will, however, have no financial implications on the exchequer.

As per the proposed system, each revenue and development secretary will be in charge of two to three villages. While the revenue secretaries will concentrate on works pertaining to the Revenue Department, the development secretaries will take care of the remaining development works.

Administrative control

The revenue secretaries will be under the administrative control of MROs and the development secretaries will work under the MPDOs. The development secretaries will concentrate on works like pension, loans, DRDA scheme and all other development works.

The sources said that the village administration was in chaos after the introduction of the existing (village secretary) system. The village secretaries were drafted from the personnel who had earlier worked as VDOs and VAOs, taken on deputation from other departments and few others on contract basis.

Lack of training

However, lack of training to the village secretaries had kept them incapable of many works, except in those which they had been dealing with earlier. Those who were drafted from the Revenue Department had been inept in handling the development works and others had difficulties in dealing with revenue works, the sources stated.

Besides, tax collection in villages was also hit badly in the existing system. Lack of internal resources had been denying facilities like street lighting, power supply to many villages and other maintenance works. The proposed system of development secretaries is likely to improve the tax collection.

In Anantapur district, the lethargy in property tax collection has been below Rs. 2 crores per annum against the demand of about Rs. 7 crores from 1,005 gram panchayats, including 31 notified panchayats. The audit department is learnt to have identified arrears of about Rs. 20 crores in the district.

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