The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Panchayat raj bodies hit by crisis: Manpade

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Wednesday, Dec 19, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Panchayat raj bodies hit by crisis: Manpade

Special Correspondent

‘Panchayat workers haven’t got salaries for months’

‘Spirit of local self-governance is being throttled’
Raise in allocation to Rs. 25 lakh to each gram panchayat sought

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

In support of demands: President of the Karnataka Rajya Gram Panchayat Employees’ Association Maruthi Manpade addressing members during the protest march from city railway station to Ambedkar Bhavan, in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Bangalore: Karnataka prides itself in being the first State in the country to enact the Panchayat Raj Act in the eighties. But hundreds of gram panchayat workers and elected members from all over Karnataka, who held a joint convention in Bangalore on Tuesday, said that the spirit of local self-governance was now being throttled by denial of funds and the lack of a political will to decentralise power.

Problems

Karnataka State Gram Panchayat Workers’ Union president Maruti Manpade highlighted how the problems of the panchayat raj institutions had reached a point of crisis.

The 40,000 workers of gram panchayats, he said, had not been given their salaries for months because there were not enough funds and the available funds had been used to pay pending power bills and take up works. There was not even enough money in panchayats to pay the 91,000 gram panchayat members their allowances when they attended meetings.

The panchayats were expected to take up development works ranging from water and sanitation to road repair with a measly allocation of Rs. 5 lakh per year.

The convention demanded that allocation to each panchayat be raised to at least Rs. 25 lakh and the service of workers be regularised and their salaries paid on time.

It also demanded the appointment of panchayat development officers to ensure proper allocation of funds under various schemes.

Basudev Acharia, MP, who inaugurated the convention, contrasted the situation in Karnataka to that of his home State (West Bengal).

Allocation in Bengal

He said that 50 per cent of the budgetary allocation in West Bengal was spent through gram panchayats and workers were paid on a par with government servants with all benefits.

As the State is under President’s Rule, it was now the responsibility of the Centre to resolve the crisis in local bodies in Karnataka, he said.

Mr. Acharia promised to apprise Panchayat Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar of the situation.

Mr. Manpade and others met the Governor and submitted a memorandum.

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