E-Paper
Training underway for formation of Bal, Mahila Sabhas in Uttar Pradesh
At the Gram Panchayat level, children in the 11-18 age group would be elected for the seven ministries of the Bal Sabha, including education, security, sports, health and sanitation, food and nutrition, planning, communication and publicity.
To ensure formation and effective functioning of Mahila and Bal Sabhas in all 58,169 gram panchayats of Uttar Pradesh, the panchayati raj department is conducting a training here. The two-day training of the first batch was completed on February 9 and the second batch’s training on started on February 10.
At the Gram Panchayat level, children in the 11-18 age group would be elected for the seven ministries of the Bal Sabha, including education, security, sports, health and sanitation, food and nutrition, planning, communication and publicity. There would a Bal Sabha president and vice president along with ministers for the seven ministries. To make every panchayat child and women friendly, the government is gearing up to ensure active participation of children and women.
Inaugurating the training, Praveena Chowdhary, joint director, Panchayati Raj Training Institute said, “Aligning itself to the localization of sustainable development goals and to ensure the participation of all women and children in each gram panchayat, the Government of India directed formation of Mahila and Baal Sabhas following which Uttar Pradesh government issued directives in November 2022 to constitute women and child friendly panchayats at village levels.”
Chowdhary said, “The ministry of panchayati raj has adopted a thematic approach towards the process of localization of sustainable development goals (SDG) in panchayati raj institutions by covering 17 goals into 9 broad themes. The themes include poverty-free and livelihood-enhanced villages, healthy villages, child-friendly villages, villages with sufficient water, clean and green villages, villages with good governance, self-sustaining infrastructure villages, socially safe and equitable villages and women-friendly villages.”
The training is being conducted with the help of UNICEF, as per an official. She said, “Gram panchayats will prepare their gram panchayat development plan (GPDP) by including work related to their local priorities out of the nine themes”.
UNICEF social policy specialist Piush Antony said, “The formation of women and child panchayats is an important step towards highlighting and finding solutions to the issues of women, girls and children at the local level. Community ownership is an important pillar in issues related to women and children and these panchayats will help ensure community participation.”
During the training, the participants were trained about child rights, women’s rights and participation, constitution of women and child assemblies, roles and responsibilities etc.
