Population limit for taluk panchayat elections: Bill soon to amend Act

Bengaluru: The state government has decided to limit the population for the taluk panchayat elections. The Taluk Panchayat, which has a population of more than one lakh, has proposed that there should be at least 11 elected members.

The state government has decided to amend the Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act 1993 to allow the election of elected members and limit the population. The amendment bill is set to be tabled in the current budget session.

The government has come forward to amend the Act on the recommendation of the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Delimitation Commission, chaired by retired Additional Chief Secretary M Lakshminarayana. Based on the previous census, the Commission recommends to the government to decide the boundaries of the Gram Panchayats, Taluk Panchayats and Zilla Panchayats and the total number of members to be elected.

According to the draft of the amendment bill, taluks with a population of less than 1 lakh, a population of more than 50,000 should have at least nine and taluks of a population of less than 50,000 should have at least seven elected members.

As per the Rule of Law, the number of elected members of the Taluk Panchayat is periodically notified by the State Election Commission. There should be one elected member for each taluk of 12,500 to 15,000 people. However, a taluk panchayat with a population of one lakh should have atleast 11 elected members. Now, there will be amendment to this rule. The bill also proposed changing the existing rule that the district panchayat member constituency should have one member for every 30,000 people in Chikkamagaluru district. The new rule will apply as one member for 30,000 people in the Chikkamagaluru district excluding the Tarekere, Kadur and Ajjampur taluks.

The Minister in charge, the District Planning Committee Chairman, As per the proposed bill, the District Planning Committee will now be appointed by the Minister in charge of the respective district. The District Panchayat President will be the Vice President of the Committee. Until now, all were considered committee members. By way of amendment, the Karnataka State Decentralised Planning and Development Committee, which is chaired by the Chief Minister, is intended to make the Karnataka State Policy and Planning Commission Vice-President a special invitee.