GUILHERME ALMEIDA
MARGAO
It’s a sheer irony that when successive governments obstructed devolution of powers and functions to the Zilla Panchayats envisaged under the 73th Constitutional Amendment, the governments of the day had no qualms in sponsoring “junkets” under the guise of study tours to the Zilla members in the last two decades.
That’s not all. Notwithstanding that the key for the Zilla Panchayat powers lay in the hands of the state government, Zilla Panchayat members travelled far and wide at the tax payers’ cost, covering most of the States, right from the Wagha international border in Punjab to the picturesque Kulu-Manali in Himachal Pradesh to hunt for powers.
A glance at the records revealed that the government-sponsored “junkets” under the guise of study tours began a decade and half ago, when the government of the day sanctioned the tours to keep the agitating ZP member in good humour. Since then, there’s been no looking back for the Zilla Panchayat members as the tours took them to the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, picturesque Sikkim, Darjeeling, and God’s own country, Kerala et al.
That’s not all. Zilla members from South Goa also visited Kanyakumari in South India to the pilgrim centres of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and not to mention Andaman and Nicobar Islands, besides Ahmedabad, Surat, Dwarka in Gujarat.
Lakhs of rupees of tax payers’ money, if not crores, have been spent on the Zilla Panchayat members towards the study tours over the last 15 years. Sources say the government must have spent over a crore of rupees to fund study tours of South Goa Zilla Panchayat this five year term.
If ZP members of the South Goa Panchayat had ended their five-year term in 2014 with a pilgrimage to Varanasi and other pilgrim centres in Uttar Pradesh, the successive members did not lag behind. They capped their tenure with a study tour to Hyderabad, which later took them to Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
If records compiled by the South Goa Zilla Panchayat is any indication, the government spent a whopping over half a crore of rupees on the junkets on the study tours in the last five years. Information gathered by The Goan
revealed that the study tour proposal originates at the Zilla Panchayat before the file goes to the government for sanction. There’s no record to indicate that any government has ever rejected the study tours proposed by the Zilla panchayats “ an indication that the powers that be, which had been steadfast in refusing to devolve powers and functions, have been liberal in sanctioning the junkets.
The curious part of the junkets is that while the study tour reports unfailingly brought forth the powers enjoyed by the states visited by the ZP members, the government of the day only brushed aside the reports, only to sanction another study tour the next financial year.
Incidentally, at a recent training program conducted by the Goa institute of Public Administration & Rural Development (GIPARD), Zilla Panchayat members attending the meeting strongly batted for the annual study tours, not just in India but abroad as well.
