Vijayawada: Sarpanches stage protests across state

Vijayawada : Cutting across the party lines, village sarpanches across the state on Monday staged protest demonstrations at the Spandana Grievances Cell programmes at the respective district collectorates wearing black badges and submitted their grievances to the district collectors seeking immediate release of the funds of 15th Finance Commission and 5th State Finance Commission.

In response to the call given by the president of AP Sarpanches Welfare Association Chilakalapudi Papa Rao, the sarpanches raised slogans and presented their petitions to the district collectors. The sarpanches in Guntur, Palnadu, Bapatla, NTR, West Godavari, Kakinada, Srikakulam and East Godavari and other districts staged demonstrations and submitted representations to the district collectors.

Chilakalapudi Papa Rao and national vice-president of Akhil Bharat Panchayat Parishad Dr Jasti Veeranjaneyulu, Tadikonda sarpanch Tokala Sarojini, Phirangipuram sarpanch Meda Babu, Medikonduru sarpanch Poola Nagamani, Vengalayapalem sarpanch Lalita Kumari, sarpanches Suryaprakasa Rao, Krishna Prasad, Raghava Reddy, Mabbu Sirisha, Ramesh, Muttaiah, Sikha Vijayalakshmi, Ramadevi, Madhava Rao and others went in a procession raising slogans demanding funds for the panchayats and submitted a memorandum to district collector Venugopal in Guntur and later submitted a memorandum to the statue of Dr BR Ambedkar at Lodge Centre.

Papa Rao, addressing the gathering, said that the sarpanches staged peaceful demonstrations throughout the state.

The sarpanches would submit memoranda to the MPs, MLAs, MLCs and the ministers every day till May 7. He said that if the funds were not released to the village panchayats there would be irreparable damage to the panchayat raj system.

Dr Veeranjaneyulu said that if the 15th Finance Commission funds of Rs 2010 crore were released to the village panchayats there would be tremendous development in the villages.

State general secretary Allu Vijay Kumar, vice-president Dharma Raju, treasurer Vari Sridevi, secretaries Narendra, Krishna Mohan, Vuyyuri Appi Reddy, Shaik Alla Bakshu, and other leaders led the demonstrations in their respective districts and submitted memoranda to the district collectors.