Cabinet panel pitches to make gram panchayats effective

Hyderabad: Cabinet Sub-Committee on new Panchayat Raj Act has suggested easing building permission norms in villages. It also favoured appointing a co-option member for each gram panchayat besides making reserving gram panchayats and wards for two consecutive elections.

The committee led by PR Minister Jupally Krishna Rao met at Pragathi Bhavan on Tuesday to discuss new provisions to make the gram panchayats more effective.

The committee also invited Advocate General Prakash Reddy for the second day meeting.

According to sources, the committee widely discussed on strengthening GPs by allocating huge funds and responsibilities. The committee felt that sarpanch and ward members’ responsibilities should be clearly mentioned in the new Act and asked the Advocate General to study legal obstacles if any in this regard.

Discussing on conducting gram sabhas, the committee wanted changes in the present system and suggested that the gram sabha meetings should be held once in two months rather than once in six months.

The committee members also discussed on appointment of co-option member in each gram panchayat in line with mandal and zilla parishads.

The committee members said that though there is a provision of appointing a co-option member drawn from self-help groups or functional groups, in reality no gram panchayat is appointing co-option members. In addition to the existing co-option member provision, the Cabinet Su-Committee also discussed to have one more co-option member from subject experts.

So far, the villages who wish to construct more than two-storey buildings in the village should have to apply before the Director of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) Department at Hyderabad. But the committee wanted to ease the norms and entrust the job to District Panchayat Officer (DPO) expert committee.

“The expert committee should accept and reject the building permission and same has to be included in the new PR Act,” the sub-committee opinioned.

The sub-committee is doing exercise to implement similar reservation system for panchayatraj elections. The committee wanted to do more exercise on the reservation system before including it in the new Act.