Panchayat Amendment Bill tabled in Bengal assembly, sparks heated debate

Kolkata, Feb 7 (PTI) West Bengal Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Pradip Majumdar on Monday tabled the Panchayat Amendment Bill in the state assembly, triggering sharp reactions from the opposition.

Participating in the discussion, BJP MLA Biswanath Karak strongly criticised the Bill while another BJP legislator, Arup Kumar Das, alleged that after coming to power, the state government had done away with 'gram sabhas' and abolished ward committees in urban areas, nixing any bid to decentralise.

On the other hand, Trinamool Congress MLAs Apurba Sarkar and Samir Kumar Jana extended their support to the Bill.

A key provision of the amendment states that office-bearers of panchayats cannot be removed before completing three years in office.

Earlier, the minimum tenure was two-and-a-half years.

Explaining the rationale behind increasing the tenure to three years, Majumdar said the move was aimed at ensuring stability and better governance at the grassroots level.

He informed the House that, following Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's directives, a massive capacity-building initiative was undertaken with as many as 74,498 elected representatives from 3,339 gram panchayats, 345 panchayat samities, 21 zilla parishads and one mahakuma parishad imparted training by a premier institute to strengthen infrastructure and improve the quality of work at the panchayat level.

Dismissing the allegations raised by the opposition, Majumdar said the West Bengal government believes in real empowerment at the grassroots level.

However, the opposition BJP maintained that the amendment was a political strategy by the ruling party to prevent internal factionalism within its own ranks. PTI SUS ACD