Hyderabad: Functioning of Zilla and Mandal Parishads has gone haywire

Hyderabad: The functioning of Zilla and Mandal Parishads has gone haywire as they could not hold general body meetings in the past two months and are unable to discharge their responsibilities. Though they have been given a big role in the rural governance by allocating 29 subjects, they were unable to function for the past two months due to lack of funds and lockdown.

In fact, the ZPs and MPPs which have come into existence in July last year are unable to function from the past 10 months with no funds till end of previous financial year and now with lockdown due to coronavirus spread.

They could not function till end of the previous financial year as they did not have any money to spend. Except for salaries and maintenance, they were deprived of other financial resources in the previous financial year.

Though they were promised financial assistance in this financial year by Central and State governments, no funds have reached them in the last two months due to lockdown. While the State government has been releasing funds to the rural local bodies in this financial year through the State Finance Commission, no allocations have been made to the ZPs and MPPs.

The ZPs and MPPs did not have any allocation from the State and Centre in the previous financial year too. However, the Centre on the recommendations of 15th Finance Commission has assured 20 per cent of funds to them in this financial year.

The Centre's allocations to them have not been made so far as the State government did not send the proposals on the ratio of sharing Central Finance Commission funds between ZPs, MPPs and Gram Panchayats.

Central government has asked the State government to send the proposals on the sharing ratio between ZPs, MPPs and GPs. It promised to allocate the funds to ZPs and MPPs if the State government sends their proposals by April 15. With the lockdown for the past two months the State government did not send the proposals to the Centre.

In the annual budget of the State for this financial year, the government stated that it would give funds to ZPs and MPPs this time. However, no funds have been allocated and released to them till now.

Apart from this, the rural local bodies were unable to hold their general body meetings in the past two months with the absence of officials and public representatives. General body meetings of several ZPs and MPPs have been cancelled or postponed due to lack of quorum to hold the meetings. At the same time the officials have also not attended the general body meetings due to the lockdown.