The top leadership of the district panchayat has drastically failed to understand and tackle the developmental questions as well as the essence of decentralised governance, said, M B Syamanthabhadran, parliamentary party leader of the LDF.
Speaking at the budget discussion, he said that the ruling party has lost touch with reality.
“It is good that the president has a literary sense and potential for dreaming. But the leadership has pathetically collapsed when it comes to the question of governance. The ruling front which failed to implement most of the promises in the previous budgets are repeating the same old promises. This is nothing but old wine in new bottle,” he said.
The CPM leader severely criticised the budget for staying away from genuine issues affecting the people.
“The budget reveals the gross neglect of the productive sector like agriculture as well as creative policy suggestions to tackle the issues faced by marginalised sections like Dalits, tribes and fisher folk. Apart from cosmetic announcements there are no constructive programmes to revive agriculture. A classic case is the declining pokkali cultivation. The district panchayat has the moral obligation to creatively intervene in this burning agrarian issue. But the apex body miserably failed to intervene,” he said.
He also expressed doubts regarding the “transparency” in the functioning of the panchayat.
“I have raised issues of financial irregularities several times at the board meeting. Infrastructure projects like road repairing are becoming fodder for corruption. There are allegations about politician-contractor nexus in some infrastructure projects. There were also complaints in the functioning of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan,” he said. He also pointed that the total expenditure and income in the district panchayat budget aredecreasing in the successive years.
Yesudas Parappilly, LDF independent member, pointed out that most of the projects in the last fiscal were unscientific and thus could not obtain the recognition from the planning board. This has been repeated in this fiscal, he said.