ADILABAD: It Was in the year 1996 that the PV Narasimha Rao’s government at the Centre had implemented the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act. However, in the then State of Andhra Pradesh, the government order implementing the PESA in the State was issued 15 years later. It has been alleged that the State government has avoided implementing the Act due to lobbying by private companies. So it come as no surprise when the Telangana government has taken an initiative to actually enact the PESA Act, at least eight years after the GO.
The tribal PESA activists have long been trying to impose ‘self-rule’ with formation of Gram Sabha Committees.
And the State has finally asked the district administrations responsible for all the 482 notified villages in the erstwhile Adilabad district to appoint the said committees before end of the financial year 2018-19.
Adivasis Sena’s district president K Daulath Rao, who was instrumental in raising awareness on the matter, pointed out that had the said committees been formed in the year 2011 itself, adivasis would have themselves taken the contracts for laying of local roads alongside the villagers.