Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, May 22: The issues, which assume much importance in different States of the country and at Union Government level, don’t carry any significance for the bureaucrats in Jammu and Kashmir and even the interventions from highest level fail to bring them out of the deep slumber as if they are not answerable to anybody.
This can be gauged from the way the vital subject of transformation of governance at Panchayat level is being handled in the State. While many States have taken lead on the issue, the concerned authorities of Jammu and Kashmir have failed to initiate first step till date despite being aware of the fact that transformation of governance yields many positive steps for the betterment of the people.
The Ministry of Panchayati Raj is implementing the e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project in order to address all aspects of Panchayats functioning from internal core functions such as planning, monitoring, implementation, budgeting, accounting, social audit etc to citizen service delivery like issue of various certificates, licenses etc.
Since there are multiple programmes of related departments/ministries seeking to provide the requisite Information Technology infrastructure, manpower and build capacity of the Panchayats, the Union Ministry felt that all such initiatives at State level need to be converged to improve governance at the grassroots level through Information and Communication Technologies.
With this perspective in mind, the Union Ministry dashed a communication to all the States including Jammu and Kashmir on September 8, 2014 laying thrust on formulation of e-Governance strategies and plans for the Panchayats, official sources told EXCELSIOR.
In order to facilitate the States in this regard, the Ministry even provided template indicating the list of areas and items need to be covered in the Perspective Plan. Moreover, reference to some successful models and best practices were also mentioned in the template, sources said.
Through this communiqué, Additional Secretary in the Panchayati Raj Ministry, A K Goyal asked the Administrative Secretary of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department of J&K to make sincere efforts in formulating the e-Governance Perspective Plans with a minimum horizon of five years so that progressive steps could be taken towards transforming governance at local level by leveraging Information and Communication Technology.
“But, no seriousness was shown towards preparation of e-Governance Perspective Plan despite the fact that such a plan would serve as the guiding light for the transformation of governance at the local level”, sources informed.
The Union Ministry vide communiqué dated April 13, 2015, while expressing concern over delay in formulation of e-Government Perspective Plan for the Panchayats in Jammu and Kashmir, again stressed that such a plan shall be prepared and forwarded to the Ministry for appraisal, sources disclosed.
“However, no seriousness has again been shown towards this despite the fact that the Ministry had categorically mentioned in the communiqué dated September 8, 2014 that preparing and implementing the Perspective Plan will also be one of the performance conditions under Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyan”, they said.
Commenting on the lackadaisical approach of the concerned authorities, sources said, “it seems that they are waiting for Ministry to initiate strong steps to compel the State to adhere to its directions”, adding “the non-serious approach exposes that Panchayats were formulated only for making mention of in the official handouts of the Ministers and MLAs and actually nobody is serious to ensure their transformation”.
A senior officer of the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department, when contacted, said, “we have recently appointed Data Entry Operators in each Panchayat and they will help the department in consolidation of data for preparation of e-Governance Perspective Plan”. The officer, however, failed to specify the time-frame in this regard.
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