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Rural devp dept urges Punjab govt to follow ‘one village, one gram panchayat’ norm
The department of rural development and panchayats has asked the state government to follow one-village-one-gram panchayat norm as is the case of almost all the states in the country.
The department of rural development and panchayats has asked the state government to follow one-village-one-gram panchayat norm as is the case of almost all the states in the country.
The department made a plea that a village with two panchayats hampers the overall development of the village, dissects the village socially and makes securing funds for development works particularly from the Centre a tough task.
In a recent communication sent to the principal secretary of the department, the rural development and panchayats directorate has demanded framing of a policy on the matter.
In Punjab there are 12,729 villages and 13,241 gram panchayats, meaning that 512 villages in the state have two gram panchayats. Apart from Punjab, Telangana has more than one panchayat in 1,860 villages as there are 10,909 villages and 12,769-gram panchayats.
The department has also asked the state government to fix the norms for bifurcating the village into more than one panchayat, if it is inevitable, on the basis of geographic area and population.
“The decisions for dividing villages into double gram panchayats in the past were taken on political grounds, so this practice has to be stopped as it is actually not doing any good to the villages,” said a department officer. He added that request for forming more panchayats is expected ahead of the panchayat polls scheduled for next year.
Most of the states have villages as large as having population of 30,000 or even more such as Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. “On the contrary in Punjab there are 7,100 villages which have less than 1,000 population; around 4,600 villages have population between 1,001 and 1,600 villages have population of more than 5,000,” revealed an officer who requested anonymity. As per the department records, rural Punjab has a total population of 1.73 crore which is 62% of state’s population (2.77 crore).
The official added that with lesser population and geographic area within the purview of a gram panchayat the funds for development from the Centre are also sanctioned in the same proportion, which means less funds for less population and smaller geographic area.
According to a senior officer in the department, the matter has been referred to the state government for holding discussions on the matter and a decision will be reached after pondering over all sides of the matter.
