DHARWAD: H.C. Mahadevappa, Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, on Thursday ruled out any role for legislators in rural drinking water and the rural housing schemes as demanded by them.

Dr. Mahadevappa, who was replying to questions by presspersons, said that these are among the functions that have been transferred to panchayat raj institutions (PRIs) as per the provisions of law.

On the formation of the task force recently by the State Government under the chairmanship of the local MLA, the Minister said this was only a transitional measure designed to take some emergency works. It will not be continued after June, he said.

With regard to Ashraya houses, where the decisions used to be taken by the Ashraya committees headed by the legislators all along, Dr. Mahadevappa said it is for the gram sabhas to select the beneficiaries and it is final. It will not be possible either for the Chief Minister, the Deputy Chief Minister or himself as the Minister concerned to interfere in the powers, which have been transferred to the PRIs, he said.

The State Government has been planning to allot 100 houses for each of the panchayat areas every year under different schemes, including Ashraya, to meet the demand, the Minister said.

Reservation

Replying to another question, Dr. Mahadevappa said that the State Government would like to go in for reservation of seats by rotation once in two terms, instead of the present practice of changing it every term. This was being done to ensure that the members had the initiative to perform and also help develop leadership in rural areas. This, however, did not apply to the reservation for posts of president and vice-president in the three-tier system, which continued to be changed every time.

On the question of restoring the full five-year term for presidents and vice-presidents of PRIs (which had been split into three tenures of 20 months each under the Janata Dal rule and further split into two with ten month tenure in some cases), the Minister was non-committal. When his attention was drawn to the fact that all the committees and study groups, which had gone into the question had favoured a five-year full term, Dr. Mahadevappa said that he would study all the committee reports before taking any decision.

Dr. Mahadevappa defended the presence of legislators in their ex-officio capacity in the PRIs and said that they were there only to "guide" the institutions and did not say anything when newsmen pointed out that the legislators dominated the PRIs' functioning to the exclusion of its own members.

Belur declaration

Dr. Mahadevappa said that there was nothing wrong in what was being publicised as the Belur declaration made by the Congress government of S.M. Krishna before Sonia Gandhi on democratic decentralisation. The then State Government had only reiterated what had been provided in law and it got the name mainly because the convention was held in that village, he said. The State Government had been planning a series of training programmes to train the officials and the functionaries in the PRIs.

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