A delegation led by Dehradun Zila Panchayat president Chaman Singh met Chief Minister Harish Rawat at Bijapur guest house on Sunday. They expressed gratitude towards the CM for considering their plea.
It would be pertinent to mention here that the 14th finance commission has increased the allocation of fund under the Panchayati Raj System but recommended allocation of entire Rs5000 crore per annum to Gram Pradhans only. In Uttarakhand it is roughly estimated that union government would spend Rs40,000 crore in the villages directly through gram pradhan in next five years.
However, they did not talk about other two tiers- Block Panchayat President and district Panchayat President of Panchayati raj system. Seeing the quantum of money state government had tried to control the cash flow and had sent a letter to Gram Pradhan to give priority to Chief Minister’s announcements while spending their budget in their locality. For this gram pradhan strongly objected the initiative of the state government.
To give solace to the block Panchayat and district Panchayat, chief minister had decided to divert entire state’s panchayati raj institution’s fund to these two wings. Due to this gram pradhan had organised state wide agitation and even they had closed themselves within governments’ buildings.
To console them state government had decided to divert entire state's fund for Panchayati raj to these two i.e. block Panchayat and district Panchayat and had neglected Gram Pradhan in government order dated November 26, 2015. later Chief Minister media in charge Rajiv Jain visited to the protest site, where they had locked, had shown the copy of GO in which state government cancelled previous GO with immediate effect. It means now all three institutions i.e. Gram Pradhan, block Panchayatand district Panchayat would get fund from state's Panchayati Raj.
To give solace to the district Panchayat, state government had empowered it to construct road upto one kilometer in length. In his address CM Rawat said that before state government all three tiers- Gram Pradhan, block Panchayat and district Panchayat are equal and state government can’t overlook anyone. Union government had decided to help only Gram Pradhan and left block and district over to the state government. With this decision there is triangle fight between these three institution.
Being a Chief Minister of the State he has written a letter to the Union Government and appealed them to allocate money under panchayati raj institution in all three wigns. He would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi shortly and he would appeal him either you allocate fund to these two wings or allocate special grant to the state government so that state would allocate fund to these institutions sans hindrance.