Team Herald
MARGAO: Village panchayats can get the budgets approved at the gram sabhas held during the code of conduct but will have to take permission from the screening committee if they want to take up any developmental work or any “policy decisions”, said Panchayats Director Rajan Satardekar.
He pointed out that he had already issued a circular to all the panchayats regarding developmental works to be undertaken during the code of conduct and that still stands. However, he admitted that some works that need to be taken up will have to be decided upon by the screening committee.
“Pre-monsoon works for example cannot wait till the end of code of conduct and hence panchayats will have to take permission from the screening committee to float tenders for those works,” he informed.
Incidentally, the Chief Secretary heads the screening committee.
It would be pertinent to point out that only 10 of the 30 panchayats from Salcete taluka have their budgets approved by the gram sabha while Cana-Benaulim is scheduled to get it approved by gram sabha, scheduled on March 31.
Block Development Officer (BDO) Amitesh Shirvoikar had asserted that he would not permit any expenditure to be made by the panchayats unless they had their budget approved by the gram sabha prompting the Carmona Sarpanch Allwyn Jorge to seek a clarification on the matter.
Allwyn had written to the BDO, Director of Panchayats, Screening Committee and Chief Electoral Officer asking for their opinion on what should they do about approving the panchayat budget.
“Ironically despite writing to all government departments, I have not yet received any reply from anybody,” said Allwyn.
Significantly, the Director of Panchayats vide a memorandum dated March 14, 2019 had directed BDOs to ensure that the code of conduct is strictly enforced and specification mentioned that the sarpanchas and secretaries be “directed not to take any policy decision”.
