Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has strongly reacted to the criticism levelled by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on the Centre giving funds directly to the gram panchayats and demanded the latter explain why he is reluctant on devolution of powers to the local bodies when he seeks decentralisation of powers of Centre to States.
Party president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, vice president D.K.Aruna, MLA Raghunandan Rao and others said on Thursday that it is “unfortunate” that the Chief Minister is trying to “scuttle” the 73rd Amendment and stated that the Constitution itself had mandated that save for education and health, about 29 subjects like ration cards, pensions and house construction should be taken care of by the gram panchayats.
The Centre’s direct funds to the gram panchayats is to “plug the corruption in the system” as the situation has become especially “pathetic” in Telangana with the Government “throttling” the sarpanch powers and denying access to the funds but allowing the ruling party MLAs to have “discretionary powers”.
