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HOW MUCH IS IT
GONNA COST
Approx Rs 36 lakh
(For the two tours)
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I have put a written note on the file to the Panchayat Director that he should submit a detailed report to the government on the tour
- Rajendra Arlekar, Panchayat Minister
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GUILHERME ALMEIDA
MARGAO: Elected members and officials of the North and South Goa Zilla Panchayats are again on a junket .... oops, on study tours “ this time to the country’s east.
Strange it may seem, but true that the ongoing tours will cost the exchequer lakhs of rupees, just to facilitate the elected zilla members and the officials to study the zilla pattern in these states. Inquiries by The Goan have revealed that while the South Goa Zilla Panchayat has paid an amount of Rs 18-odd lakh to the tour operator as 90 per cent of the total cost, its North ZP counterpart is also believed to have paid a similar sum to the tour operator so far.
Junkets disguised as study tours have literally been a norm than an exception at the two district Zilla Panchayats since its inception in the year 2000. Zilla Panchayat members making it to the Wagha border, Kulu Manali, Simla, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, the pilgrimage centres of Uttar Pradesh under the guise of study tours is an open secret.
When The Goan asked Panchayat Minister Rajendra Arlekar whether the current tours undertaken by the members and officials of the two Zilla Panchayats were study tours or junkets, he had no reply. He however, hastened to add that he had given his nod for the tour only after he made it clear through a written note to the Director of Panchayats, Gurudas Pilarnekar, who is also on the tour as the Chief Executive Officer of the North Goa Zilla Panchayat, to submit a report on the study conducted by the touring members and officials. “I have put a written note on the file to the Panchayat Director that he should submit a detailed report to the government on the tour”, Arlekar said.
The Goan understands that while the South Goa Zilla Panchayat team, comprising of 19 members and the Chief Executive Officer, Krishna Signapurkar, are on a tour to Bhuvaneshwar, Kolkatta and Guwahati, their North Goa counterparts have Kolkatta and other North Eastern states in their itinerary.
The separate tours began on February 3 with a flight taking the touring members and officials to their places of destinations. Sources in the know said the government has not sanctioned any additional grant for the tours, but are required to utilize the grant from the administrative head.
This is the first tour sanctioned by the government for the current Zilla Panchayat members of the two district since the election held in early 2015.
Indeed, it is a sheer irony that while successive governments has been liberal in sanctioning tours to the Zilla Panchayats to study the ZP pattern in other states, no government has so far has deemed proper to give any additional powers and functions to the two district Panchayat bodies under the 73th Constitutional Amendment.
Only recently, incumbent Panchayat Minister, Rajendra Arlekar had announced that the government is not averse in handing the RDA department to the Zilla Panchayats, but the ground reality remains unchanged till date.
