Soon after taking charge of his ministries at his camp office, Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan has been concentrating on the administration and locked up prolonged reviews in the Panchayat Raj and Rural Development departments. In the first phase, he conducted a review for a period of 10 hours.
Probably, no other minister, even the chief minister conducted such intense reviews. Mostly, he has been trying to understand the prevailing situation in each department and trying to familiarize key issues in each sector so that to formulate his priorities.
In the first extent, he seems to be focusing on diversion of central funds released by the central government to various schemes during YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s regime. He asked officials why central funds released for Panchayats were diverted to some other purposes?
Though Village Secretariats are not part of Panchayats, he asked why Panchayat funds were spent there? He further tried to explore reasons for delayed payment of staff salaries. He questioned why is recovery of misappropriated funds lagging behind in employment guarantee works? Who is responsible for the delay in the payment of wages to the employed workers?
Choked by the questions from Pawan, the officials were unable to give proper answers and chewed water. At this time, Pawan suggested discussing these issues once again, but asked him to come with comprehensive reports and well-prepared answers.
Though officials gave a powerpoint presentation on various topics, they were unable to give sufficient answers to pointed questions from Pawan Kalyan. Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Department Special Chief Secretary Shasibhushan Kumar and Commissioner Kannababu found it difficult to answer those questions.
Pawan Kalyan has raised basic questions related to the previous government’s attempt to make elected Sarpanches dummy, making nominated Village Secretariats all powerful. He asked what is necessary to set up village secretariats parallel to panchayats in the state? He wondered, how the Serpanches do not have supervision and control over them?
He deplored that there are no chairs for the Serpanches to sit in the village secretariats. He advised that the best policies being implemented in Kerala in terms of funds, duties and powers for panchayats are ideal and should be considered for implementation in AP as well.
