MAPUSA
Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push for ‘Digital India', only nine of the 191 village panchayats in Goa have been able to host its own websites.
Even more surprisingly, out of the nine panchayats, the website of only one panchayat has been regularly updated. The other eight have failed to keep track of recent developments, including the election of new panch members, on their websites for quite some time now.
Answering an unstarred question of Cuncolim MLA Clafasio Dias in the ongoing Assembly session, Panchayat Minister Mauvin Godinho informed that only nine of the 191 panchayats in the State have its own websites.
According to the panchayat minister, the panchayats of Dharbandora, Sancordem, Nagoa, Varca, Navelim, Cana-Benaulim, Curtorim, Sao Jose de Areal and Pomburpa-Olaulim have websites.
Interestingly, out of 102 panchayats in North Goa, only one panchayat - Pomburpa-Olaulim - has a website.
The other eight panchayats are in South Goa and six of them are
in Salcete taluka, while the remaining two are in Dharbandora taluka.
Of the nine panchayats, the website of only Navelim Panchayat is operational and up-to-date, while the other eight panchayats have failed to regularly update their websites.
Except for Navelim Panchayat which offers online payment of house tax and a host of key information relating to the panchayat's functioning, most of the other panchayat websites are only informative in nature.
The Directorate of Panchayat's website shows addresses of only five panchayats even as the address of Pomburpa-Olaulim website has been wrongly recorded on its page.
Former Pomburpa-Olaulim sarpanch, Vinay Chopdekar acknowledged that the website has not been updated for some time now.
"The website is just informative in nature and it was last updated when I uploaded the minutes of last
gram sabha before the 2017 panchayat elections," Chopdekar said.
