Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s panchayat rally in Jammu was disrupted by panchayat leaders for making false promises on implementing 73rd and 74th amendment in Jammu and Kashmir. Just before five minutes of Rahul’s address to a gathering of over 5,000 panchayat members at the Maulana Azad Stadium, sarpanch of Ram Nagar Parikshit Singh got up and loudly objected to the Congress leader’s for “hollow promises, which have been made repeatedly but never fulfilled in the last three years”. Though Rahul Gandhi tried to convince the leaders of Panchayat Conference that his first and foremost priority is the empowerment of panches and sarpanches in Jammu and Kashmir, participants were not convinced. “If the Congress is serious about giving us our rights then what is stopping it as it’s in the government. Why don’t Congress ministers and MLAs resign?” said Ghulam Rasool, sarpanch from remote Baujwan area of Kisthwar district. In J&K, even though panchayat elections were held three years back after a gap of three decades, the process of second and third tier — block development council and district development and planning boards — with reservation for SCs/STs and women, hasn’t been completed. Militants targeting panches and sarpanches have further aggravated the situation. This is not the first time that the members of all Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference including Sarpanchs and Panchs are protesting against Rahul Gandhi and the NC-Congress Coalition Government for not implementing 73rd Amendment and according empowerment to Panchayats. Last year in September, a large number of members of the Panchyat Conference under the leadership of Sarpanch Shafiq Mir, chairman of the Conference and Sarpanch Anil Sharma, general secretary assembled outside the Press Club and held strong protest demonstration against the State Government. The panchayat conference has alleged that this Government has denied powers to over 33,000 Panchayat members in the State. They alleged that giving more time to the National Conference by Congress party for implementation of 73rd Amendment despite tall claims of PCC president Prof Saifuddin Soz, indicates that both NC and Congress were playing fixed match and befooling the Sarpanchs and Panchs of the State. Both the parties were just buying time have no clear intensions to empower Panchayats. Describing Panchayati Raj system as totally failure here, these leaders said even for the last six months labourers engaged under MNREGA have not been paid their dues which is clear violation of Panchayati Raj Act. Many of the participants joined and raised slogans for empowerment of the panchayati raj institutions in Jammu and Kashmir, leading to abrupt termination of Rahul’s speech.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 19:24:53 +0000
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