Gram Panchayat polls will be held before end of present term: Jupally

​Hyderabad: Minister for Panchayat Raj Jupally Krishna Rao on Thursday said that the government was committed to conduct elections to gram panchayats before the end of the term of the present bodies. Addressing the media, Jupally said that the details of the reserved seats and others would be sent to the State Election Commission (SEC) by June 25. 

He said that enumeration of Backward Classes voters was almost completed, and they would be provided with 34 per cent reservations.  The Minister added that the Scheduled Castes would be given 20 per cent and the Schedules tribes 6 per cent reservation on the basis of their ratio in the population. He said that along with 1,170 panchayats, where there is cent per cent ST population, 1,300 more panchayats would be reserved for the STs. 

He made it clear that in each category, 50 per cent of seats would be given to women and reservations to ward member would be done taking village as a unit and to Sarpanch, taking mandal as a unit. The newly-elected Sarpanches would be given a three-month training.  

Meanwhile, the Minister distributed tablet PCs to representatives of woman groups. He said that the tablet PCs would take the technology close to rural people.  Villagers could make application for the loans from the tablet PC. Features like Iris and Aadhaar authentication have been added to them. The Stree Nidhi Bank has distributed Rs 6,000 crore worth loans. This year the target would be to distribute loans to the tune of Rs 2,300 crore.