Over 50 sarpanches and panches have resigned en masse in two blocks of Ramban district in Jammu and Kashmir over various issues, officials said on Saturday.
They have resigned alleging lack of promised empowerment, unnecessary interference and their side-lining by the administration during the ongoing public outreach programme of the central ministers, officials said.
Amid the en mass resignation by rural civic body representatives, Peoples Democratic Party took a pot-shot at the BJP government, saying the “cosmetic normalcy and pomp and show being projected (in the Union Territory) stands punctured.”
Officials, however, said the district panchayat officer Ashok Singh held a meeting with the representatives of the agitated members and requested them to withdraw their resignation, seeking to assure them that all their genuine grievances would be addressed at the earliest.
About 50 sarpanches and panches, belonging to Banihal and Ramsu blocks, submitted their resignation en-mass to concerned Block Development Council chairpersons on Friday after an emergency meeting, the officials said.
Sarpanches Ghulam Rasool Mattoo, Tanveer Ahmad Katoch and Mohammad Rafiq Khan alleged that the promises made to them by the government have only remained on the papers.
They alleged that they are being ignored and face unnecessary interference in developmental works while the promised participation of 30 government departments in Gram Sabhas has proved a “crude joke”.
