Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Government to strengthen District Planning Committees

N.J. Nair

Technical secretariat to assist DPCs in Plan projects

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The Government will form a technical secretariat comprising town planning, statistics and planning offices in each district to strengthen the District Planning Committees (DPCs) and equip them to play a decisive role in the preparation and integration of Plan projects.

Though the DPCs were constitutional bodies, their role had so far been limited to approval of Plan projects prepared by the corporations, municipalities and panchayats in their ambit. The committees were expected to make creative contributions in the planning process with the support of the secretariat in the district as well as the State-level.

The Government decided to make the DPCs fully functional in accordance with the spirit of the decentralisation of powers so that they could play a nodal role in the Plan preparation by the Local Self-Government Institutions (LSGIs), their integration at the district level and also the linkages with the State-level Plan projects.

Formation of the technical secretariat was the first step in enhancing the role of the DPCs. The district town planning offices would be brought under the DPCs to provide technical support on spatial planning. The district statistical offices would also come under the DPCs to provide support for monitoring as well as generating and maintaining the data base required for planning.

The district planning office would provide overall support for decentralised planning with special focus on socio-economic planning. All the three offices headed by the deputy directors would be housed in a single building of the DPC for which an ideal design would be prepared.

A modern office would be built with the contribution from all the local self-government institutions in each district.

The Government would also seek the support of the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Ministry of Urban Development as well as the Planning Commission for setting up new offices for the DPCs. The Local Administration Department had been taking steps for coordinating various departments to prepare the Eleventh Plan proposals in a meaningful manner.

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