The State Government is going to block the remaining budgetary allocation for the year 2011-2012 of all the 95 blocks of Uttarakhand, saying it is “impossible for it to release rest of the amount due to technical and limited resources that it has”.

However, criticising the State Government for this decision, the representatives of Haldwani kshetra panchayat staged a protest at the block headquarters here on Monday and demanded release of the remaining budgetary allocation for the 2011-2012.

At the same time, on the condition of anonymity, highly-placed sources in the State Government stated that the funds allocated for panchayat bodies seems to have been diverted to other sectors like disbursement of salaries of the employees of the various civic bodies. According to the letter of the secretary finance to secretary of panchayati raj and other officials concerned, the State Government in a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Indira Hridayesh on December 31, 2012, decided that “in view of certain technical reasons, limited resources and demand of fund from other important areas, release of remaining amount of the total budgetary allocation to different blocks of the mountainous State won’t be possible”.

The matter of concern is that even the Haldwani block has not been able to get its full budgetary allocation for the past two-years. As the officials concerned of the Haldwani block informed that they had received only `37 lakh out of `99.98 lakh allocated for the year 2011-2012 and rest of the amount which is around `63 lakh has not yet been released. More so, the officials added only `34. 32 lakh and that too in two installments have been released out of the budgetary allocation of `99.98 lakh for the year 2012-2013, so far till February this year.

Since the State Government is now contemplating on scrapping the budgetary allocation granted to the democratically elected body of kshetra panchayats, it is difficult to say what will be future of these local bodies ahead, wondered the Haldwani block development committee (BDC) members.

Reacting strongly to the aforesaid decision of the State Government, Sandhya Dalakoti, Haldwani block pramukh, said that it is quite unperceiving on part of the State Government to take such tough decision. The fact is that the kshetra panchayat bodies are democratically elected bodies. If the State Government blocks their annual allocations, it will be quite unfortunate, she added.

As per the State Government’s December 31, 2012 meeting it may also scrap the ‘kshetra panchayat nidhi’ citing the same reasons of limited resources. However, the views of the block pramukhs have also been sought in this regard by the State Government as the said letter indicate.

However, as the aforesaid letter suggests the State Government may release the fund ie `21 crore for the year 2012-2013 to different kshetra panchayat bodies as kshetra panchayat nidhi; so that they could complete their ongoing works.

On the issue of scraping of the kshetra panchayat nidhi, the kshetra panchyat members also expressed their disappointment.

There are 40 kshetra panchayat members in Halwani block and each member gets only about `62,000, said the kshetra panchyat members. “Therefore, how we can carry out even small developmental works in our respective areas if that amount is also stopped,” they alleged.