Stop politicising panchayats -Soter

(letter to Editor published in Herald on 29/10/2013 and in Gomantak Times on 30/10/2013) The editorial titled "The puppeteer and the healer" (Herald, October 26,) has, so to say, hit the nail on the head. The perpetrators of the mischief in the village Panchayats also double up as saviours of the people. The instability witnessed in village Panchayats is no different from the inconsistency and contradictions in the utterances of the Panchayat Minister. It is not the letter alone in the 73rd Constitution Amendment that determines what is just and unjust. The spirit of the Constitutional Amendment is as important in interpreting the letter. The Government, in the first place, is guilty of widespread corruption when it discriminates in the distribution of funds to Panchayats, and that too without any village plans approved by the concerned Gram Sabhas. To say that the VP body is above the Gram Sabha in the case of issuing of construction permissions demonstrates gross ignorance. Does the issuing of construction licences impact the socio-economic situation in a village or not? On the one hand the Gram Sabhas are expected to prepare socio-economic plans for their villages, including spatial plans, and in the same breath the Panchayat Minister, like a legal consultant for real estate, claims that the issue of construction licences is not the business of the Gram Sabha.The Panchayat Minister would do well to restrain himself from politicising the panchayat institutions. Soter D'Souza, Socorro