Conference stresses on District Planning Committees

Bangalore, June 20 (UNI) A conference on Panchayati Raj today passed a resolution, seeking the setting up of District Planning Committees across Karnataka from this financial year to promote decentralisation of the planning process.

Former Planning Commission member L C Jain, the main orgainser of the conference, told reporters here that the Commission had written to all the States to compulsorily set up such Committees from this year. Setting up such Committees had already been delayed by 13 years.

Constituting of DPCs would help in the direct involvement of people from the village level to districts in making proposals and allocations for their areas, he said, adding that the State could then incorporate the distict-level proposals in its budget.

Mr Jain lamented that though some of the districts in the State had constituted such Committees, they were not functioning due to various reasons.

He said the conference also demanded the revision of delimitation of Assembly constituencies considering panchayat as an unit, like in Tamil Nadu. The present criterion of delimiting on the basis of revenue circles had created many problems in almost all the panchayats as they had been split into two or three constituencies.

The conference also demanded the setting up of a Panchayat Services Authority for the smooth running of the administration.

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