Carmona VP races against time in drafting GPDP

NT NETWORK

MARGAO

The village panchayat of Carmona has started work on drafting its Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP) with a special gram sabha that was held after the hoisting of the national flag on Republic Day, as it struggles to meet the February 28 deadline.

Locals gathered at the Carmona community hall where they were informed of the GPDP planning process and how to go about the plan. “As per law we started the process of draft GPDP by having a gram sabha with maximum participation of all groups in the village including youth organisation, clubs and anganwadi. We have constituted a VDC (Village Development Committee) as well as a planning and resource team who will be working on the plan on daily basis. Other villages have already sent their village plans but we don’t want to lose funds and want it as a priority,” said sarpanch Allwyn Jorge.

VDC convenor Socorro Miranda has planned how to meet the deadline. “First we will work on getting the data from every ward for which we will be discussing it on Sunday with ward members and draft points, so when we have a three-day discussion they will have all the information. Unless we get this information we cannot plan ahead. We will try and do our best to meet the deadline first by gathering all the information. The whole village requirement will be taken up and then ward wise requirements will be added,” he said. Carmona which has seven wards had so far missed the deadline of December 31 for submission of the GPDP as the VDCs were not in place and neither was the panchayat body that didn’t have a sarpanch.  Now the panchayat will have to convene two panchayat body meetings and one gram sabha to approve the plan which will then have to be submitted to the BDO’s office by the end of February.