The panchayats are hot bed of corruption. Being licencing authorities, these village level institutions who are elected by the people to work for the development of the villages are using the powers vested in them to ‘victimize’ them instead. My personal experience is that ‘extortion’ has reached to such a level that hard-earned money is extracted from poor and rich alike.
Just as the Prime Minister has launched ‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign to remove all dirt and clean the cobwebs in the government offices; we need a similar campaign to clean the offices of corruption. What has happened to the Time-Bound Delivery of Services Act 2013? If at all it is notified, then people are not aware of it.
It is most unfortunate that even Block Development Officers at the district level feign helplessness and people are inclined to believe that the booty is shared amongst all the concerned authorities from the village to district level. There is no hard evidence of this as the Vigilance Department or Anti-Corruption Bureau has yet to lay a trap to show the proof of this happening.
In the meantime, people are left with no choice but to either cough out the cash demanded by the panchayat or to face the music. The Office of the Deputy Director of Panchayats is flooded with appeals under Section 66 (2) of Goa Panchayat Raj Act regarding regulation of Building Rules and Regulations. All cases pertaining to building/house permissions and occupancies come under this section. If the block development officers had a say and could pressurize the panchayat secretary and sarpanch, the pressure on the deputy director of panchayat would have been reduced to a great extent.
The people at large are the sufferers, many of them have to travel long distances and those in employment have to take leave from the workplace to attend to court hearings. Lawyer’s fees are also a burden and are borne by the victim whereas the panchayat’s lawyer is paid from the panchayat funds. This is encouraging the panchayats to victimize the people as the former have nothing to lose. If the secretary and sarpanch had to pay the lawyer’s fees and other expenses from their own pockets, there would have been far less number of cases filed in the office of the Deputy Director of Panchayats.
