Sarpanches of some villages in Haryana Wednesday tried to march to the Chief Minister’s residence in Chandigarh and had to be held back by the police, which resorted to lathicharge.
The sarpanches have been protesting for the past two months against the introduction of e-tendering for development works in rural areas.
The Haryana government claims it introduced e-tendering for infrastructure projects in villages to ensure transparency, accountability, and faster execution. Under the new system, introduced two years ago, the village panchayat can carry out works up to Rs 2 lakh on their own. Projects of higher value have to be carried out through e-tendering.
Why are village sarpanches opposing this?
The village heads, or sarpanches, see this as an attempt to take away the powers of panchayats. While the system was brought in two years ago, opposition to it began only around two months ago. That is because elections for sarpanches were held in November 2022 after a long gap, due to the Covid pandemic and some court cases.
The newly elected sarpanches now say that the e-tender move is aimed at taking away the power of panchayat raj institutions.
Ranbir Samain, president of The Sarpanch Association of Haryana, said, “This is clear centralisation of powers. Under the new system, the government only needs to take 22 executive engineers of the state’s 22 districts into confidence to control the entire tendering system of nearly 6,200 village panchayats. Politicians at higher levels are eyeing the budget of all village panchayats.”
Another sarpanch said the new system is an attack on their image, “seeking to create a perception that we are not honest”.
