MARGAO: The much-delayed South Goa District Planning Committee (DPC) meeting, which was postponed in December due to a lack of quorum, has been scheduled on January 11, 2024.
It may be recalled that none of the MLAs of the district or the South Goa MP had turned up for the last meeting that was supposed to take place on December 13, 2023.
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While nine of DPC’s elected members, including the South Goa ZP (SGZP) members and Margao Municipal Council (MMC) chairperson had turned up, the meeting had to be postponed due to the lack of quorum, which as per the Panchayat Raj Act, is 4/5th of the total members of the DPC.
DPC Member Secretary Florina Colaco stated that SGZP Chairperson Suvarna Tendulkar has reconvened the DPC meeting again on January 11 to transact the business of approving the draft-development plan.
She expressed confidence that this time the DPC meeting will go ahead with the required quorum.
Tendulkar said that she has asked the help of SGZP members to get their respective MLAs to attend the meeting.
The SGZP chairperson said that she had already contacted the chairpersons of the municipalities based in South Goa.
It may be recalled that at the time of the previous meeting, the municipalities were yet to send in their annual development plans.
It is pertinent to note that the DPC will consolidate all the development plans received from the village panchayats and municipalities from South Goa to prepare the District Development Plan (DDP), which would also need to be approved
by the DPC.
The SGZP has been reaching out to panchayats that are yet to submit their respective development plans and has assisted the other panchayats which have already submitted their development plans.
In the past, DPC meetings have failed to take off due to lack of quorum or failure to receive the individual development plans from either the panchayats or municipalities.
