Chandigarh: Angry over the Haryana Cabinet’s decision to amend the Panchayati Raj Rules, 19 sarpanches of Alewa Block in Jind district — which comes under Haryana deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala’s Uchana assembly constituency — returned their official records, stamps, and proceeding registers to the block development officer Thursday, ThePrint has learnt.
According to the sarpanches, the move will weaken their authority and that of the whole Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).
To discuss their concerns, the Haryana Sarpanch Association convened a meeting at Samalkha, Panipat, Sunday where they aim to take a collective decision to oppose the government’s move.
A press release issued by the Haryana Information and Public Relations Department after the Haryana Cabinet’s meeting on 4 July said that the cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in Chandigarh, granted approval for the amendment in the Haryana Panchayati Raj Rules of 1995.
The new rules, called Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Rules of 2023, require the panchayats to use any grant-in-aid given by the state government to the gram panchayat, panchayat samiti, or zila parishad only for the specific purpose for which it has been assigned.
The amendments further specify that the state government has the authority to instruct these panchayat bodies to carry out specific functions, and duties, or implement development work using their respective funds.
“This directive can only be issued if the assigned development work has been requested by a resident of the concerned Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti, or Zila Parishad and is deemed by the state government to be in the public interest,” the release said.
After the cabinet meeting, Khattar speaking to media persons, said that sometimes villagers come to him or the government with complaints that the panchayat was not doing the development work in their street.
आज मंत्रिमंडल की बैठक में कई महत्वपूर्ण प्रस्तावों को मंजूरी प्रदान की… pic.twitter.com/C5CS74xHaE
— Manohar Lal (@mlkhattar) July 4, 2023
Even after the government’s directions, the panchayats would sometime obey and on other occasions ignore the directions, the CM said.
“Similarly, our MLAs come to me with complaints that you have given all the powers to the panchayats, and they can’t even get small development work done. Now, with this amendment, even if an MLA wants to get some work done, or an MP has an issue, we will be issuing directions to the panchayats from here, and they will be bound to undertake that development work,” Khattar added.
Meanwhile, to register their protest, sarpanches of 19 villages — Nagura, Badhana, Naguran Nirman, Dehola, Sandil, Thua, Mando Kheri, Pegan, Shamdo, Chuharpur, Katwal, Durana, Alewa, Dhigana, Hassanpur, Dhillowal, Raichandwala, Khanda and Gohian — have returned their office material to the block development officer of Alewa block, Ram Mehar Singh, Sarpanch, Badhana village and president of Alewa Block Sarpanch Association, told ThePrint.
“Since we became sarpanches after the PRIs elections in October and November 2022, the state government has been taking away our powers,” said Singh. “First, they made e-tendering for most of the development work and gave the officials more control over them, and now, they are amending the rules that empower the government to instruct the PRIs to do a particular work.”
He said that he was also a sarpanch of his village in 2010, but the powers of the sarpanches have been reduced a lot since then.
“Now, we are just chowkidars (watchmen) of the village,” he added.
For Ranbir Samain, president of the Haryana Sarpanch Association, the amendment approved by the cabinet is completely against the spirit of the Panchayati Raj Act — which is aimed at transferring powers to the grassroots in the hands of panchayats.
Speaking about the meeting scheduled for Sunday, Samain told ThePrint, “We will take a stern decision for our future course of action in consultation with all the members. This government is against the spirit of the Panchayati Raj, which was the dream of Mahatma Gandhi. First, they diluted our powers through e-tendering and now, they want to make the sarpanches merely rubber stamps,” he added.
Protests against e-tendering
The state government amended Rule 134 under the Panchayati Raj Act in February 2021 to introduce e-tendering for the allocation of work for a value more than Rs 5 lakh. The limit for work that could be given without e-tenders was later reduced to Rs 2 lakh.
According to the government, the move was essential to end corruption in the panchayats, however, the sarpanches alleged that the purpose of introducing e-tendering was to take away the powers of all work above Rs 2 lakh from the hands of sarpanches and give these powers to the officials.
But, the move didn’t turn into a problem then because the term of panchayats ended on February 21, and the next elections were postponed due to Covid-19, which could be held only in October and November 2022.
The sarpanches from across the state under the banner of Haryana Sarpanch Association led by Samain have been agitating against the e-tendering process since they assumed office in December last year.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
Also Read: E-tender is CM Khattar’s new mantra. Haryana sarpanches call it attack on ‘village culture’