Kolkata: The performance of the West Bengal panchayat affairs and rural development department has undoubtedly reaped rich benefits for Trinamool Congress in successive elections.
But at the same time charges and allegations of corruption in the same department have posed major embarrassments for the state government and the ruling party a number of times. So now the state government has decided to monitor the functioning of the department through a special portal to check the events of corrupt practices.
According to state government sources, the area of the functioning of the state panchayat and rural development department is so vast that it is almost impossible to monitor every single activity of the department. Hence, taking advantage of those loopholes, corrupt practices pop up.
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However, the top brass of the department wants to have a bird’s eye view of the functioning of the department and that too through a well-orchestrated online system. Hence a separate portal will be introduced shortly and the top brass of the department feel that through this there will be more transparency in the functioning of the department.
According to senior Trinamool Congress leader and the state panchayat affairs and the rural development minister, Subrata Mukherjee, his department is supposed to monitor all the development activities in the 3,299 panchayats in the state. However, a major portion of the funds coming for these developmental activities come from the kitty of the Union government.
“So there is an absolute necessity for proper monitoring, evaluation and analysis of the development activities. We want to present the proper accounts of each penny spent through our department to both the Union and the state government. We have asked the entire departmental officer to strictly monitor the progress of work,” Mukherjee said.
According to him, the Union government is always looking for excuses to stop payments of funds to the state government. “As it is, the central funds are receding every day. So we do not want to give any scope to the Union government,” Mukherjee said.
On this issue, an official of the state panchayat affairs and rural development department said that the entire monitoring process will be implemented in phases. “The implementation part will be completed by the financial years 2022-23, the process for which will be started from now onwards,” he said.
Recently the department has issued a notification outlining guidelines on this issue. The departmental top brass is of the opinion that the implementing authorities would be aware of minute details like the number of residents in a particular village and their opinion, among others. So the department is stressing regular local-level meetings with the people residing in the localities concerned.
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Every Village Panchayat has been instructed to form a 'Planning Facilitation Team's by October 30 this year. Each team will be divided into sub-teams of six to seven members who will conduct these locality-level meetings. The outcome and minutes of these meetings will be uploaded to these portals. “So the details of the panchayat-level planning and progress of work will be available at the portals, which in turn lead to more transparency in functioning,” a department official said.
Departmental sources said that pilot- projects for this portal have already started at the panchayat levels.
