New clauses in Panchayat Raj Act irk secretaries

​Hyderabad: With the newly-introduced Panchayat Raj Act stripping panchayat secretaries of their executive powers, they seem to be at loggerhead with the government and are demanding removal of certain clauses from the Act. They are understood to be planning to swing into action mode if the government does not pay heed to their demand.   

According to their leaders, they have submitted many memoranda to the government and public representatives seeking redressal of their issues at the earliest. They also made representations to the District Collectors and Panchayat Raj Department officials, they said. Now, they are planning to submit representations to MLAs, MLCs and MPs in the State. 

Speaking to The Hans India, president of the Telangana Panchayat Secretaries’ Central Forum president Parvatalu said they would go for direct action if the government did not respond. He said there were certain words in the Act which would dent the morale of panchayat secretaries. 

Parvatalu said some clauses included in the new PR act were against the service rules of the panchayat secretaries and would lead to political rifts in villages. He said they would submit a representation to the Sub-Committee which drafted the new PR Act seeking redressal to their problems. 

Making panchayat secretaries responsible for any audit issue of the panchayat funds also did not go well with the officials. They also oppose the government decision to remove secretaries if survival of 85 per cent of the saplings planted as part of Haritha Haram programme is not ensured. 

They said without having cheque power, how the secretaries would be made responsible for audit issues. They said earlier the cheque power was vested with the sarpanches and the secretaries jointly. The new Act amended this and gave the power to sarpanches and the upa-sarpanches. 

“If the sarpanch and his deputy commit frauds, how the panchayat secretaries would be made responsible? The sarpanch may refuse to give details and allocation letters to the secretary. In such cases, the secretaries would become scapegoats,” Parvatalu said. 

The secretary system was introduced to check the misuse of funds by sarpanches and now the same was abolished, giving scope for sarpanches to indulge in irregularities, he said. 

The secretaries said the government had not been paying wages through its grants to sanitation workers for decades. They had been paid a meager amount of Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 through own sources of the panchayat and that too, at the mercy of sarpanches, they said. In such a case, how the secretary would take care of sanitation of the villages, they questioned.