Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: J&K Panchayati Raj Act)

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J&K Panchayati Raj Act

Recently, the Union Cabinet has approved adoption of the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Raj Act, 1989 and said the process for local body polls in the union territory will start soon.
The Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said the move will help establish all the three tiers of grassroots level democracy like in other parts of the country for the first time since Independence.

There will be early elections in Jammu and Kashmir in all the three tiers of the panchayat, block and district level and people will elect their representatives soon. They did not have the opportunity to elect their local representatives. The power to elect will now be with the people.
The three-tier system was not available in Jammu and Kashmir in the “pre-370 period”, but now it will be established in the Union Territory like in other parts of the country.
The article 370 gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The home ministry had issued the executive order under which district development councils (DDCs) will be set up.
The DDC along with the other two bodies, the Halqa Panchayats and the block development councils (BDCs) will complete the three-tier structure in Jammu and Kashmir.
‘Halqa’ means the area comprising a village or the contiguous number of villages determined by the government.

The power to manage local bodies will go to the people, who will now elect their local representatives and will be able to do district and block-level planning, besides implementing various welfare schemes.
The order issued after the amendment says, “Every district will be divided into 14 territorial constituencies to elect members of the body. The DDC shall consist of the directly elected members from territorial constituencies in the district, members of the Legislative Assembly representing a part or whole of the district whose constituencies lie within the district and the Chairperson of all Block Development Councils of the district”.
All DDC members, whether or not elected by direct election from the territorial constituencies in the district, shall have the right to vote in the meeting of the District Development Council.
MLAs will have no voting rights in the case of election or removal of the chairman and vice-chairman. Only the directly elected members shall have the right to vote.

Political parties in J&K have expressed concern that this will limit the MLAs’ role. The Assembly was dissolved in November 2018.
Last year, the special status of the former State under Article 370 of the Constitution was revoked and it was downgraded and bifurcated into UTs- J&K and Ladakh, the latter without an assembly.
Currently J&K is under the administrative control of the Lieutenant Governor.