Reservation for GP posts announced

MANGALORE: Elected member of the Gram Panchayat at a meeting to decide reservation for the post of gram panchayat president and vice president in Mangalore on Friday 4th June 2010. Photo:R.Eswarraj

After a discussion that lasted several hours and ended late on Friday, the district administration announced the names of gram panchayats in Mangalore taluk that will have presidents and vice-presidents from the reserved categories.

Of the 49 gram panchayats in the taluk, 31 will have presidents from reserved constituencies and 21 will have vice-presidents from these categories.

The categories include Women (General), Women (Scheduled Castes), Women (Scheduled Tribes), Women (Backward Classes A), Women (Backward Classes B), Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes A and Backward Classes B.

Thanks to the Panchayati Raj system, which envisions a greater role for women in grassroots politics and administration, 17 of the 49 gram panchayats will have women presidents and 16 will have women vice-presidents.

These presidents and vice-presidents will have a 30-month tenure, after which another process of identification of reserved gram panchayats will be taken up. The reserved panchayats were selected through a lottery system.

“We first eliminated chits with names of gram panchayats that had a reserved candidate from a particular category in the recent past.

An elected gram panchayat member was then asked to draw the chits from the remaining lot and select the reserved panchayat,” said Deputy Commissioner S.A. Prabhakar Sharma.