The Gram Panchayat Hakkotaya Andolana has opposed the State government’s move to curtail the right of the Gram Sabha to select beneficiaries of the housing programmes.
In a press release, it said Housing Minister V. Somanna had said the government would amend the law to making it compulsory for Gram Sabhas take the consent of the Deputy Commissioner, ZP CEO, tahsildar and the MLA to prepare the list of beneficiaries for housing schemes. It opposed this decision that curtailed the right of Gram Sabhas to select beneficiaries of the housing scheme as it completely undermined the power of the GP as a local self-government.
Mr. Somanna also stated that henceforth the approval of the Gram Sabha to the list of beneficiaries for the Ashraya houses was not final. Instead a Monitoring Committee consisting of MLAs, DC, ZP CEO, tahsildar and PDOs would be set up to approve it. The State government should allow GPs to function as self-governments and provide them with required rights and powers to do so. Instead the government here was using its constitutional powers to disempower local self-governments.
The andolana would challenge the move of the government aimed at catering to the self-interest of a centralized power-hungry administration that wanted to uproot the core of political decentralisation. In 2007, the government attempted to amend the law for this very issue. Then, in order to uphold the autonomy of the Gram Sabhas and to strengthen local governance, the andolana had mobilised members of over 5,000 GPs and put up a strong resistance.
