CHENNAI: In the first phase of nominating a person with disability (PwD) to rural local bodies, the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department has received a total of 4,398 nomination applications from 2,901 village panchayats in nine districts of the state.
The Tamil Nadu Panchayats (Second Amendment) Act, 2025, was amended recently to nominate a person with disability in every village panchayat, panchayat union council and district panchayat. The deadline for submission of applications ended on July 31. In the nine district panchayats, 63 nomination applications have been received, an average of seven per district panchayat. For the 74 panchayat unions where nominations were called for, 462 applications were received, an average of six per panchayat union.
In the first phase, the state is in the process of filling 2,985 nominations in rural local bodies. As the next step, the district level committee, chaired by the personal assistant (development) to the collector, will scrutinise the applications and based on the ‘service and qualification’ of the applicants, it will forward its recommendations to the collector. The collector will be issued with a standard operating procedure for the nominations.
As per the government order issued by the department on June 26 for the nomination of persons with disabilities, equal representation is to be provided ‘as far as possible’ for persons with all types of disabilities and for women as well.
“The number of applications has exceeded our expectations in the first phase. We’ll call for nominations in the remaining local bodies in the subsequent phases,” an official said.
However, in some rural local bodies, the applicants had to be encouraged by the local officials, said local governance activists.
“Where the disability associations are active, there were good responses (from the rural local bodies). But in some cases, applicants had to be nudged. In one instance, the officials had a list of beneficiaries for the disabilities pension scheme and spoke to several people to get them to come forward,” said an activist who did not want to be named.
Under this, members may be able to call the attention of the executive authority concerned, commissioner, secretary or chairperson to any neglect in the execution of panchayat or municipal work, or to any waste of municipal or panchayat property or to the basic needs of the locality. Every member will have the right to interpollate the president or chairperson in meetings on matters connected to administration and have access during office hours to the records of the municipality or panchayat after issuing notice to executive authority.
The two bills introduced by the TN government in the legislative assembly to nominate persons with disabilities to the local bodies were subsequently assented to by the governor in June this year. Chief Minister M K Stalin had announced that in the first phase 3,634 differently abled members will be nominated to local bodies. The number of applications received for nominations to urban local bodies was not immediately available.