BIJAPUR: Opposition leader in the zilla panchayat, Panchappa Kalburgi said here on Friday that development works had come to standstill owing to the power struggle within the Congress, the ruling party.

Addressing a press conference, he said zilla panchayat president Arjun Rathod and vice-president Shivanagouda Patil, who were elected for a term of 20 months, had resigned after 10 months paving the way for other members to take over for the remaining period. He said the two officials had stopped visiting offices.

The Congress was not able to finalise who would take over and the resignation letters had not been submitted to the authorities concerned. "If submitted to the Government, their resignation letters would be kept pending for 15 days as per norms, and only thereafter accepted. Later, a notification for elections had to be issued. All this would take at least a month and till then, the zilla panchayat would remain without leaders'" he said. Mr. Kalburgi said there were five Standing Committees comprising elected members in the zilla panchayat. Of this, only the Education, Health and General standing committees had met. However, the other three standing committees had met not even once and approval for development works could not be given.

In the last elected body too, Mr. Kalburgi said, the Congress' practice of changing president and vice-president for every 10 months made developmental work suffer. In a five-year term, the general body met only 23 times instead of 30 times and he demanded to know why people should be deprived of development works just because of the internal affairs of the Congress.

Mr. Kalburgi said there was only three months left in the current financial year and progress of the different departments in the zilla panchayat was less than 50 per cent. According to a progress review by the zilla panchayat Chief Executive Officer in November, some departments had not spent any funds on works. For example, the Rural Water Supply Department, was sanctioned Rs. 1.45 crore but the progress has been nil. He urged Mr. Rathod to convene a general body meeting in a week's time and allow members to discuss works related to their respective segments.

Referring to the irregular water supply in Indi Branch Canal (IBC), he said 20 of the 46 distributaries in the canal system, particularly those in the tail-end, hardly received water. It was necessary to bring in the "warabandi" system (releasing water into some distributaries for few days and into the remaining ones on other days).

Zilla panchayat members Neelakanth Savalagi and Bagirathi Chavan, and Janata Dal (S) district unit office-bearers Neelkanth Chalavadi, Chandrakanth Hiremath and Abhishek Chakravarthi were present.

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