The New Indian Express: Kochi:
Saturday, March 22, 2014.
An RTI data
obtained by social activist D B Binu reveals that Kochi Corporation councillors have seriously
defaulted in conducting ward sabhas to the limit that they stand at the risk of
being disqualified now.
While a number of councillors have not given details
of the ward sabha meetings to the Corporation, the councillors who have given
the data admits that they are least interested to make arrangements to function
democracy at the grassroot-level.
According to
Municipality Act, the meetings of grama sabhas, the grassroot-level democratic
institution in each village panchayat should be convened in the respective
local wards once in every three months, under the guidance of the ward
councillors.
If any ward
councillor defaults to convene grama sabha meetings twice consecutively, the
Act says, he or she could be disqualified.
According to
the RTI reply that Corporation gave to the activist, more than 10 councillors
has not even convened ten grama sabha meetings in the past three years since
the present ruling council took charge.
This could
mean that they are too short of the mandatory number of meetings that a
councillor need to convene, which puts them at the risk of disqualification.
Councillors
Selina Peter, Carmel Antony, Benedict Fernades, Joji Kuriakott, Mercy Teacher,
Sojan Antony, Suja Roy and Sudha Dileep Kumar comes under the notorious ‘below
10’ list. The list includes some of the big wigs in the corporation too,
including the Corporation Town Planning Committee chairman K J Sohan and GCDA
chairman N Venugopal. Mayor Tony Chammany, however, managed to just skip
sharing this notoriety with a 11 meetings to his credit.
Many did not
even care to submit the details of the meetings. Councillors K M Rahim, K A
Siyad, A H Niyas, P D Suresh, K N Sunil Kumar , M P Mahesh Kumar, N A Shafeeq,
A R Padmadas, P R Raneesh , Elizabeth Teacher, P S Manikandaraj are yet to
submit to the Corporation the total number of meetings they have convened in
their respective wards .
While
majority of the councillors are clearly lazy to convene the meetings, it should
also be noted that some of them have excellent track record to their credit,
Take the case of P S Prakash who has convened 17 meetings, the top most number
of meetings amongst all councillors.
Shyamala S
Prabhu, who has convened 16 meetings, stands second among the toppers.
It is also
worth noting that Corporation councillors across the state have been demanding
a longer time frame, preferably six months, as the mandatory gap between the
two grama sabha meetings.
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