25 Mar 2017 | 07:42pm IST
Except for minor hiccups, Agarwada had a smooth sailing
The Agarwada Panchayat consists of seven wards with a population of 2,276 people. In the last election held in the year 2012, the eight elected members are Shashikala Damaji, Eknath Chodankar, Sudan Shetye, Suman Khorjuvekar, Prabhakar Nagvekar, Sitaram Raut, Bhagirath Gaonkar and Shamsundar Chopdekar.
The Agarwada Panchayat consists of seven wards with a population of 2,276 people. In the last election held in the year 2012, the eight elected members are Shashikala Damaji, Eknath Chodankar, Sudan Shetye, Suman Khorjuvekar, Prabhakar Nagvekar, Sitaram Raut, Bhagirath Gaonkar and Shamsundar Chopdekar.
Later, with a mutual understanding among the members, Suman Khorjuvekar became sarpanch and Prabhakar Nagvekar as deputy.
After three years, Shashikala Damaji became sarpanch while Eknath became her deputy and later in 2016, Sudan Shetye became deputy sarpanch.
Since the post of Sarpanch was reserved for women, it was rotated among the women.
The panchayat collects house tax, licence fees, sopo and other taxes on time and this is reflected in quite satisfactory audit report for the year 2015-16. Of the total tax revenues of Rs 9 lakh, the panchayat is yet to collect Rs 3.5 lakh.
The panchayat has a community hall which it rents out for wedding and other programmes, earning an yearly rent of Rs 1 lakh. A part of the panchayat premise is also rented out to sub-health centre for Rs 34,000 yearly.
The panchayat employees a worker for collecting only dry garbage from every ward, which is sent to the Saligao treatment plant every month.
The panchayat conducted four regular gram sabhas and four special gram sabhas for the year 2015-16 with an attendance of 80-100 people.
A major issue facing the panchayat is a crematorium and the people have repeatedly demanded for the same gram sabha after gram sabha.
The village is allotted 200 sq mts of land for crematorium, but the villagers are of the opinion that the crematorium needs an area of 1000 sq mts. However, landowners are not ready to part with that much area of land.
Sarpanch said that the problem can be solved only if either of the parties relents.
The village faced three other major issues: Chapora river front beautification project, illegal hill cutting on the Agarwada-Mandrem slope and land filling of salt pans.
The hill cutting and land filling were stopped by the villagers, while the beautification project was ignored due to official apathy.
In 2015-16, the panchayat received Rs 24 lakh under the GIA scheme to carry out developmental work out of which Rs16 lakh has already been utilised for construction and repair of gutters.
