Stage set for Arunachal panchayat elections

Our Correspondent

Itanagar: The stage is set for holding pending panchayat polls in the State with the State Election Commission working overtime to conduct elections to the local bodies soon.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu while informing this during a workshop on a pre-panchayat election awareness campaign on the topic ‘Leadership incubation through Panchayati Raj system’, for government officials here on Tuesday, urged them to equip with the process minutely for its successful conduction.

The five-year term of the last elected Panchayat in the frontier State expired on April 13, 2018. A change in structure from the three-tier Panchayati Raj system to a two-tier one has delayed the panchayat polls in the State.

The change in structure meant doing away with the Anchal Samiti, the intermediate level of the three-tier Panchayati Raj system, to set up a two-tier system, involving Gram Panchayats and Zilla Parishads.

Khandu said that as the erstwhile three-tier system of the Panchayati Raj has been changed to a two-tier system, officials conducting its election for the first time need to have detailed knowledge of the system so that they could go back to their respective places of duty and aware the villagers.

“Elections for the first time will be conducted for only Gram Sabha and Zilla Parishad. Therefore, it is mandatory that our officials are well equipped with the system and the process,” the chief minister said.

Khandu asserted that the change was long pending and inevitable after Arunachal Pradesh became a full-fledged state in 1987.

He requested the officials to create awareness on the importance of local bodies so that villagers have a clear mindset on whom to elect as their representatives. He expressed optimism that deserving candidates would become members for a robust PR system and all-round development of rural areas of the state.

Khandu informed that an all-party legislative meet has been convened for Wednesday that will discuss on whether to conduct this election based on party or not.

“Our vision is clear. We need to have the most deserving persons in our PR system, irrespective of which party he or she belongs to or not,” he said.

The Chief Minister added that only when eligible and deserving candidates win, real development would start from the ground and democracy in its true sense would prevail.

Regretting that in all these years the government could not devolve all the 29 functions to the panchayat members as enshrined in the Constitution, Khandu assured that in the coming days these would be devolved.

“Arunachal Pradesh, with its vast resources, has the potential to develop on all fronts even without central or external aids. We only need to have the will and eligible members in governance. I hope this panchayat elections would be a new beginning for us in this direction,” he added.

The workshop is being jointly organized by the State Institute of Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development department and Arunachal Pradesh Rural Livelihood Mission.

Panchayati Raj Minister Bamang Felix, Health Minister Alo Libang and several legislators were present during the workshop.

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