Government fund balm for gram panchayats

Hyderabad: Finally, the villages have something to cheer up as the State government released funds to them to take up development and maintenance activities.

Officials have informed that Rs 339 crore, as promised by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, have been released to the gram panchayats.

Each district, except Hyderabad, received Rs 12 crore on the average. The funds have reached the accounts of 12,751 gram panchayats of the State.

On average each GP received Rs 2.60 lakhs. However, the funds would be distributed on the basis of population and according to this, panchayats with more population would get more amounts than the average amount.

The State government has added the funds of State Finance Commission to the Central Finance Commission and released the funds. They would be helpful to the GPs to run the 30 Days Action Plan, which began on September 6.

The State government promised Rs 4,000 crores to the panchayats in this financial year. The State would add SFC funds to the CFC grants and would release them every month.

All the GPs would receive about Rs 14 lakhs each till March next year. The GPs have been starved of funds for the past few years.

The State has not released the grants under the State Finance Commission. Even the grants of the Central Finance Commission have been adjusted to several expenditures.

The sarpanches were also not provided with the cheque power to draw funds from the accounts of the Panchayats. There were demands from the sarpanches to cancel joint cheque power to sarpanch and upa Sarpanch.

The process to provide cheque power to draw funds from the banks has been initiated in July and the digital signatures of the sarpanch and upa sarpanch have been registered in the banks.

This would enable the sarpanches to draw funds and to spend them on the ongoing 30 Days Action Plan. The main thrust of the Action Plan would be on sanitation and the sarpanches have been told to clean the villages at the earliest.

The Central Finance Commission has also eased the restrictions on the usage of the funds and allowed the sarpanches to use the CFC funds for flood relief related activities.