SHILLONG: Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) has submitted its suggestions on the Village Administration Bill including the need to elect women as village heads to the Committee on VAB set up by the KHADC.
The Bill was passed by the council in 2015.
TUR has reiterated its stand on a democratic local self-government in tune with the constitutional guarantees as envisaged in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution as well as other rights.The Committee on VAB is headed by Teilinia Thangkhiew.
TUR said the Bill has to be gender just, meaning that all the adults of the village, men and women, have to elect the Dorbar executive and village head and there cannot be a bar on women being elected as the village head/chief. TUR said that the VAB has to be about the people of the village – the Dorbar and not the Rangbah Shnong or the Dorbar executive as real power has to vest in village residents and hence Section 8 has to be drastically amended.
“Untrammelled power of district council as expressed in Section 19 in the present VAB to remove the popularly elected Dorbar executive and Rangbah Shnong has to be repealed,” it suggested, while adding that the VAB has to acknowledge, empower and initiate participation of indigenous tribal minorities such as the Karbi, Rabha, Hajong, Tiwa/Lalung in local self-governance. TUR said that there should be only the Dorbar Shnong, which is more representative and participatory rather than creating dual institutional structure of the Dorbar Shnong and the well funded Village Development Council (VDC) intentioned to be created through Sections 13-17. It said the VDC has to be abolished. “Rather than having a separate VDC with its general council, it would be better to devolve financial powers to the Dorbar Shnong itself and all rural development money should be routed through the Dorbar Shnong to break the stranglehold of the rural development bureaucracy and the MLAs, MPs and MDCs on rural development programmes in the state,” TUR said.
