GTA can help hill panchayats from outside, says former panchayat member

YAWAN GURUNG, MIRIK, JULY 22, 2023: On the occasion of the first panchayat elections in the hills of Darjeeling after a gap of more than two decades, the first elected panchayat samiti president of Mirik Block Chandra Bahadur Rai who was elected in 1978 has recounted his experience of running a panchayat. 

He is a teacher by profession, former headmaster of Soureni Rabindranath Higher Secondary School, and a political observer. 

“I was elected in an election as a CPI (M) candidate from the panchayat samiti in the year 1978. After winning the election, I had done a lot of development work in the panchayat area. In those days the Block Development Office would not have received enough funds like now.” He said that the panchayat samiti had done a lot of work for education, health, food, agriculture and animal husbandry in the rural areas during that time.

” The biggest thing is that we were able to provide land to the landless people who do not have land.” Stating that the panchayat samiti had a lot of capacity and a constitutional body, he said the state governments and the Centre provided them a lot of support and these could be developed. The main task of the next board should be be to get the ownership of the houses and premises of tea garden people. These were rightfully owned by them. Tea garden people had been demanding for a long time parja patta for land on which they had settled." C.B. Rai who is now 82 years old says in his days Mirik was the smallest block in West Bengal.

There were four gram panchayats – Soureni, Saduhgaon, Duptin and Krishnanagar --- and there were six panchayat samiti members. Now there were 62 gram panchayat members and 15 panchayat samiti members. 

Now only two-tier elections were held in the hills, but under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Act the provision for holding three-their panchayat elections was there. 

In any case, the GTA could help the panchayats from outside and provide funds and also carry out inspections from outside.