CHENNAI: The state’s move to merge and upgrade several village panchayats in 28 districts, where elections for rural local bodies are pending, with the adjoining urban local bodies has drawn criticism from organisations working for local self-governments.
Their key contentions include loss of jobs under MNREGA scheme in panchayats, trouble in reaching heads of civic bodies, and hardship in getting government services. They also pointed out that the five notifications issued on Wednesday pertain only to the local bodies in the 28 districts where elections are pending.
Nandakumar Siva, vice president of Thannatchi, an NGO working for the rights of local bodies, told TNIE, “These notifications are against democracy. The government is trying to complete the merger of local bodies through shortcuts. This will affect the possibility of women and members of SC/ST communities getting elected as people’s representatives. It is against social justice.”
Siva said no one would oppose urbanisation wherever it is necessary. In Chennai, for instance, Medavakkam is a local body which has many urban characteristics and merging this village panchayat is justified. But merging Padikkaasu Vaithanpatti village in Virudhunagar where agriculture is the primary livelihood with an urban body is totally unfair, he said.
“The developmental programmes (mostly infrastructure facilities) implemented by the central and state governments for rural local bodies are entirely different from urban local bodies. For rural areas, mostly livelihood projects are being implemented and due to the merger, rural residents will lose these programmes,” he pointed out. When a village panchayat becomes part of an urban area, the local water resources will be wiped out, he alleged.
D S Sivasamy, former additional director of state municipal administration department and current president of Confederation of Organisations of Urban Development, said, “Grama Sabha has great powers within its jurisdiction. After the merger, these powers will be lost.”
He also explained that the executive authority of a village panchayat is the president of that village. But after the merger, all powers will go to officials, and the authority of a panchayat president will be reduced to a bare minimum. “The government’s reasoning cannot be accepted. Why can’t all infrastructure development be carried out even when they continue as village panchayats,” he asked
Gurusaravanan, chairperson, Institute of Grassroots Governance, said, “The government has released these G.O.s unilaterally without dialogue. People who depend on MGNREGS work are going to lose their jobs and there’s no mention on the number of workers that will be affected by these G.O.s and how the government is going to support them.”
G Palanithurai, a retired professor at Gandhigram Rural Institute and a researcher on functioning of local bodies, said, “The people of village panchayats oppose the move not only to protect their self-reliant lifestyle and safeguard their cultural identities, the taxes they pay will also go up if villages are merged with urban local bodies.”
When villagers argue that they will lose their grama sabhas, the government points to area sabhas in urban local bodies. But the area sabhas do not have constitutional validity, and the government must address people’s fears on the issue.