the goan I network
MARGAO
An inquiry into the status of the South District Planning Committee is all the more important since no meeting has taken place of the panel despite the fact that South Goa MP, the Rajya Sabha MP and all the MLAs from the district are members of the statutory district planning panel mandated under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment.
Indeed, it has been a year since Panchayat Director Gurudas Pilarnekar notified in the official gazette the re-constituted District Planning Committee for the South Goa district with 19 members. All the MLAs from the district are permanent invitees of the DPC.
Inquiries by The Goan has revealed that not a single DPC meeting has taken place since the Panchayat Director had res-constituted the DPC in March 2016, leaving it virtually defunct.
When The Goan asked South ZP Chairperson Navnath Naik, ex-officio Chairperson of the South District Planning Committee to shed light on the status of the statutory planning panel, he merely said that his office is awaiting intimation from the Panchayat Director’s office on the constitution of the DPC. “My office has till date not received any communication from the Panchayat Director’s office on the reconstituted DPC,” Navnath said.
Interestingly, when The Goan called the Panchayat Director Pilarnekar to throw light on the South Goa DPC, he said since his office has already notified the re-constituted DPC, the Chairperson and the Member Secretary should now go ahead and carry out the statutory functions. “I do not know what more correspondence the South DPC wants from my office. The re-constituted DPC stands notified and my office need not send any more correspondence on the matter,” Pilarnekar asserted.
That the DPC, South has not held a single meeting for the last year, assumes significance since none of the members, including the MPs and MLAs, have deemed proper to call for a meeting as per the Constitutional mandate.
Says Convenor of Goa Panchayat Raj Institutions, J Santan Rodrigues: “That not a single meeting of the DPC has taken place till date only goes to show that neither the government, nor the elected representatives or the members are keen in obtaining the annual plan from the Panchayats, Municipalities and the district ZP and consolidate the plan and prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole. This is not new since not a single consolidated plan has been submitted to the government since the DPCs were first constituted by the government around 17 years ago”.
While preparing the draft development plan, the DPC shall have regard to matters of common interest between the ZP, Panchayats and Municipal Councils in the district, including spatial planning, sharing of water and other physical and natural resources, the integrated development of infrastructures and environmental conservation.
The Chairman of the DPC is required to forward the development plan as recommended by the Committee to the government for further action.
