Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

            The point that I am saying is that the same people elect different functionaries and so, there is a lot of overlapping of responsibilities and people are confused about who is supposed to do what. Therefore, having done something, having created institutions at the local level and the national level, we really need to codify the roles and responsibilities, the functions and the duties of each of the functionaries like Member of Parliament, the MLA and the local representative. If we do not do that, there is going to be a lot of confusion. People expect the Member of Parliament to do the same thing that they expect from the representatives at the local level.

            Therefore, this is extremely important that the Ministry or the Government makes an attempt to codify the roles and the responsibilities. This is very important.

            The second point is this. This is a very good appraisal. How can you do the appraisal? There are three important changes that are brought by the 73rd and the 74th Amendments – functions, functionaries and finances. They are the three ‘F’s; they are exclusively given to the local self-government. If you want to do a proper evaluation, it is important to know that the functions which have been earmarked to local self-government as the exclusive responsibility. How many panchayats have been able to exercise their powers on each of these functions? In the absence of this information, it will not be proper to evaluate them.