CHANDIGARH: After a marathon meeting held with representatives of the sarpanches association, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said they had reached a consensus on many demands while the association maintained that they had not reached any conclusive agreement on the main demands.
While the CM said that a final announcement in this respect would be made on Friday morning, Ranbir Samain, president of the sarpanches association, said that they had set a deadline of 12 pm for the acceptances of their demands.
“There has been no consensus on our main demands. We have given the government time till Friday noon to accept our demands, failing which our agitation will continue,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minsiter said “Two rounds of talks were held in a cordial atmosphere and we discussed all the demands. A fresh round of talks will be held on Friday morning. We have reached a consensus on a majority of the demands. All these will be disclosed since talks have not concluded yet.”
The meeting started on Thursday evening, just past 4 pm, and sarpanches put forth their demands before the CM claiming that all the demands were not only justified, but also instrumental in strengthening the PRIs. The first round of the meeting ended around 9.15 pm.
The Haryana Sarpanch Association is flagging 16 demands that include raising limit of e-tendering system from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 50 lakh, entrusting the right to write ACRs of employees of all departments working at Gram panchayats, action be taken against officer concerned instead of sarpanch on finding any deficiency in development works, hike in sarpanchs’ remuneration from Rs 3,000 to Rs 30,000 and panches’ remuneration, ensuring role of sarpanch in every development work besides entrusting them authority of issuing completion certificate and the Right to Recall law be made applicable first to MLAs/MPs.
They are also demanding the MNREGA payment to be made within three months and it be done at the block level. Its daily wages be increased from Rs 321 to Rs 600 and online attendance of MNREGA be stopped as many people could not mark their presence due to poor or no signal of internet connection.
Other demands include withdrawal of all police cases booked during the agitation, due amount of PRIs be released to gram panchayats, immediate removal of illegal possession over panchayat land in the villages, exemption from toll tax, one per cent amount of land registry and two per cent of domestic power bills in villages be transferred to the panchayat’s accounts.