The Sarpanches protesting for the past two months against the state government’s decision to introduce e-tendering system for developmental works in rural areas now getting support by the political parties in opposition in the state including Congress, INLD and AAP. On last Wednesday, when the protesters tried to move from Panchkula to Chandigarh by breaking police barricades in order to march to the residence of Haryana Chief Minister, the police resorted to lathi-charge. According to Haryana state government, it was introduced e for infrastructure projects in villages above Rs 2 lakh to ensure transparency as well stop corruption. Now question arises why village Sarpanches opposing this? They alleged state government trying to take away the powers of panchayats. According to a government spokes person while the system was brought by the government two years ago but they started opposing now because elections for Sarpanches were held in November 2022 after a long gap due to the Covid epidemic outbreak in the state.
The newly elected Sarpanches said that the e-tender move is aimed at taking away the power of panchayat raj institutions. Ranbir Samain, president of The Sarpanch Association Haryana while talking to media persons said this is clear centralization of their powers and the ruling government needs only 22 executive engineers in the state’s 22 districts into confidence to control tendering system of nearly 6,200 village panchayats across the state since politicians at higher level in the state are eyeing the budget of all village panchayats along with state bureaucrats, thus enhancing corruption in the state. The protesting sarpanches said that the new system is an attack on their image, powers and what was the need to hold their elections and insult elected members, they raised question.
Meanwhile, Haryana Cfief Minister Khattar said the e-tendering initiative was part of the government’s zero-tolerance policy towards corruption as well as transparency in procurements since the duty of the panchayats is to ensure smooth execution of developmental works in their area for which state government will provide timely funds for the same. Haryana Rural Development and Panchayat Department minister Devender Babli alleged the leaders of political parties in opposition, especially Congress fomenting the stir for their self-vested political interest. Information reveals that former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda also leader of opposition in Haryana Vidhan Sabha and HPCC president Udai Bhan recently had a meeting at Chandigarh in which several prominent Congress MLAs were present and knocked at the door of Governor Haryana submitted a memorandum to intervene into the matter.
According to the memorandum submitted to Governor, Congress leaders in the state alleged ruling BJP-JJP government not able to control increasing prices of all essential commodities, increasing unemployment in the state recorded as 29.4% and nearly four times higher than other states, fast increasing corruption and scams in government offices, fast increasing crime in the state. Congress leaders blamed ruling government unable to sort out several important issues related to the farmers including unable to get compensation as well as minimum support price of their crops and shortage of water and power supply.
