ROQUE DIAS | NT
Senior reporter
MARGAO
The apathy of the state government towards collecting data on various fronts under Centre’s ‘e-panchayat mission mode project’ has resulted in failure in getting central government funds called ‘progressive grants’.
The Union ministry of communication and information technology repeatedly wrote to the state panchayat directorate pushing it for gathering e-data for the project.
The central Finance Commission provide grants to states in two categories – basic grants and progressive grants. States like Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and others have been availing the grants in both the categories for the e-panchayat project. A reliable source from the central government’s audit team, which carried out audits on panchayats of the state, said that Goa has missed the opportunity in availing the ‘progressive grants’ from the central government running into crores of rupees on three fronts – waste management, e-data and drinking water facilities.
Goa could not avail the progressive grants for failing to collect e-data.
Central government auditors on condition of anonymity said that they have stressed on the need to collect data for successful implementation of the e-panchayat project.
There have been no action taken reports from the state government, an auditor said, adding that the auditors’ report has not been gone through and complied with by the state government for the last five years.
“It appears that the government is not serious in collecting the most essential data. If a legislative assembly question is put forth before the directorate of panchayat then the director refers it to the concerned BDO, who in turn writes to the panchayat secretary. The secretary looks into all books, compiles the information and dispatches it to the director through the BDO… What the state government could do is to go for online birth and death registration,” he said.
There is no e-data on households, illegal houses, funds availed and utilised.
“If this is not done then the state will find it difficult in implementing the e-panchayat project and will not get progressive grants,” the auditor said.
In Salcete taluka, only the Navelim panchayat has been computerised, that too partly.
Panchayat director G P Pilernekar admitted that the collection of e-data has been delayed because the bidder in the tender for the particular work that had been floated earlier quoted Rs 5 crore. Therefore we tendered the work this month. It is now awaiting the nod from the finance department.
“The IT department is taking care of it,” he said.
Senior system analysts from the department of electronic and information technology and the National Informatics Centre of the Union ministry of communication and information technology wrote several times to the directorate of panchayats about the matter.
The last letter was dispatched on May 23, 2014 asking the panchayat directorate to gather e-data of all the panchayats.
The letter asked the directorate to focus on area profiler, which facilitates the local government to maintain and manage data on socioeconomics, demographics, public infrastructure, amenities, family registers, elections and elected representatives.
The letters also stressed on maintaining a national asset directory, as it aims to keep a stock of all the assets created, controlled or maintained by the panchayats.
Promoters of the ‘national panchayat portal’ assist panchayati raj institutions to create their own websites. It is a collective name given to all the panchayat websites created using web-based content management and exchange frameworks that generate and maintain dynamic websites of all the panchayats.