Panchayat raj system

1. A Nagar Panchayat or Nagar Parishad or Notified Area Council or City Council is a form of an urban political unit in India comparable to a municipality. An urban centre with more than 11,000 and less than 25,000 inhabitants is classified as a "Nagar Panchayat" or "Nagar Parishad". Each Nagar Panchayat or Nagar Parishad has a committee consisting of a chairman/Mayour with ward members. Membership consists of a minimum of ten elected ward members and three nominated members. The N.A.C. members of the Nagar Panchayat are elected from the several wards of the Nagar Panchayat on the basis of adult franchise for a term of five years. There are seats reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, backward classes and women. The Councillors or Ward Members chosen by direct election from electoral wards in the Nagar Panchayat. 

Functions:

1. Provide essential services and facilities to the urban area.
2. Sanitation programme in township.
3. Street lighting and providing roads in every wards and main roads of town.
4. Set up and run schools in urban area. Execute programme for adult literacy and run city libraries.
5. Water supplying to every wards of urban area.
6. Drainage system to clear the solid and liquid wastes from town.
7. Build culvert for underground drainage system.
8. Records of births and deaths

2. Panchayat samiti (BLOCK): is a local government body at the tehsil (taluka) level in India. It works for the villages of the tehsil that together are called a Development Block. The Panchayat Samiti is the link between the Gram Panchayat (village council) and the zila parishad(district board). There are a number of variations in the name of this institution in the various states. For example, it is known as Mandal Praja Parishad in Andhra Pradesh, Taluka Panchayat in Gujarat, and Mandal Panchayat in Karnataka.

Composition: Typically, a panchayat samiti is composed of ex officio members (all sarpanchas of the panchayat samiti area, the MPs (Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha) and MLAs (Vidhan Sabha) of the area, and the Sub Divisional Officer of the subdivision), otherwise unrepresented members (representatives of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and women), associate members (such as a farmer of the area, a representative of the cooperative societies, and one from the agricultural marketing services sector), and the elected members of that panchayat block (tehsil) on the zila parishad (district board).

The samiti is elected for five years and is headed by a chairman and deputy chairman elected by the members of the panchayat samiti.

Composition of mandal parishads

A Mandal Parishad is constituted for a revenue Mandal, as such, both the Mandal Parishads and the revenue Mandals are coterminous. A mandal Parishad is composed of the following members:

Mandal Parishad Territorial constituency members. Members of the Legislative Assembly having jurisdiction over the Mandal. Members of the House of people having jurisdiction over the Mandal. Members of the council of States who are voters in the Mandal. One co-opted member, belonging to minorities. The Mandal Parishad Territorial constituency (MPTC) members are directly elected by the voters, whereas, the Mandal President is elected by the MPTC members. The members are elected for a term of five year. The elections to MPTC s is done on political party basis. The elections are conducted by the State election commission.The Sarpanches of the Villages in the Mandal are permanent invitees to the Mandal Parishad meetings.

Departments:

The most common departments found in a panchayat samiti are:

1. Administratio
2. Finance
3. Public works (especially water and roads)
4. Agriculture
5. Health
6. Education
7. Social welfare
8. Information Technology

Each department in a panchayat samiti has its own officer, most often these are state government

Source of income:

The income of the panchayat samiti comes from three sources:

1. taxes levied upon land and water usage, professional taxes, liquor taxes and others
2. income generating programmes
3. grants-in-aid and loans from the State Government and the local zila parishad
4. voluntary contributions

For many of the panchayat samiti the main source of income becomes state aid. For others, the traditional taxing function provides the bulk of revenues. Tax revenues are often shared between the gram panchayats and the panchayat samiti.

3. A gram panchayat is a local self-government institution at the village or small town level in India, and has a Sarpanch as its elected head. Under British Colonial rule, the role of panchayats were strengthened, whereas under post-independence they were given little right of co-determination. After attempts to deal with local matters at the national level, panchayats where reintroduced as institutions of local self-governance in 1992.

Composition: The Sarpanch, or elected head, has the responsibilities of

1. Maintaining street lights, construction and repair work of roads in villages and also the village markets, fairs, collection of tax, festivals and celebrations.
2. Keeping a record of births, deaths and marriages in the village.
3. Looking after public health and hygiene by providing facilities for sanitation and drinking water.
4. Providing free education.
5. To organise the meetings of Gramsabha and Grampanchayat 

A gram panchyat consists of between 7 and 20 members, elected from the wards of the village, and they are called a "panch". People of the village select a panch, with one-eighth of seats reserved for female candidates. To establish a gram panchyat in a village, the population of the village should be at least 500 people of voting age.

Source of income: The main source of income of the gram panchayat is the property tax levied on buildings and open spaces within the village. Other sources of income include professional tax, taxes on pilgrimage, animal trade, grant received from the State Government in proportion of land revenue and the grants received from the District Councils of India Zilla Parishad.

The gramsevak / gram vikas officer is the communicator in government and village panchayat and works for the sarpanch. The district planning commission (DPC) is also responsible for disbursing cash to the gram panchayat.

Grama sabha:

Gram sabha(s) includes all the adult citizen voters of the village. It is empowered to support or topple down the gram panchayat body. This gram sabha can contribute to the number of decisions taken by the gram panchayat and can facilitate to modify weak decisions whenever they feel. The gram panchayat can be established for a village having a population more than 750 to 25,000. The villages having less population are grouped under group-gram sabha. The member count usually ranges from 7 to 17 depending on the strength of the village population. These form various Committees, viz. Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Public Works, Social Welfare and Health and sanitation in village Gram Panchayat.

Grama sabha meeting:

According to Sec 6 (3) of APPR ACT, the meeting of a gram sabha should compulsorily be held twice in a year. The Government also notifies the two dates on which the meeting is to be held compulsorily. The gram sabha meeting should be held on every 14 April and 3 October. Conduct of gram sabha twice yearly is a minimum, not maximum - Gram sabha can be convened as and when necessary and as many times as possible, depending on the need. In States like Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Punjab, Sikkim and Uttar Pradesh there are statutory provisions to hold the gram sabha two times a year, whereas in states like Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan the gram sabhas are held 4 times a year. Gram sabhas are held 6 times in a year in Maharastra.

4.District councils of india:

The District Council or Zila Parishad or Zilla Parishad, District Panchayat, or Zila Panchayat is the third tier of the Panchayati Raj system. Zila Parishad is an elected body. Chairpersons or Block Pramukh of Block Samitis are also represented in Zila Parishad. The members of theState Legislature and the members of the Parliament are members of the Zila Parishad.

Zila Parishad are elected from the district on the basis of adult franchise for a term of five years. Zila Parishad has minimum of 50 and maximum of 75 members. There are seats reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, backward classes and women.

Councillors chosen by direct election from electoral divisions in the District and The Chairmen of all the Panchayat Samitis form the members of Zila Parishad. The Parishad is headed by a President and a Vice-President

Functions:

1. Provide essential services and facilities to the rural population and the planning and execution of the development programmes for the district.
2. Supply improved seeds to farmers. Inform them of new techniques of training. Undertake construction of small-scale irrigation projects and percolation tanks. Maintain pastures and grazing lands.
3. Set up and run schools in villages. Execute programmes for adult literacy. Run libraries.
4. Start Primary Health Centres and hospitals in villages. Start vaccination drives against epidemics and family welfare campaigns.
5. Construct bridges and roads.
6. Execute plans for the development of the scheduled castes and tribes. Run ashramshalas for adivasi children. Set up free hostels for scheduled caste students.
7. Encourage entrepreneurs to start small-scale industries like cottage industries, handicraft, agriculture produce processing mills, dairy farms, etc. Implement rural employment schemes.
8. They construct roads,schools,& public properties.And they take care of the public properties.
9. They even supply work for the poor people.(tribes,scheduled caste,lower caste)

Source of income:

1. Taxes on water, pilgrimage, markets, etc.
2. Fixed grant from the State Government in proportion with the land revenue and money for works and schemes assigned to the Parishad.

      3 The Zilla Parishad can callect some money from the panchayats with the approval of the govrnment. 

      4. It gets a share from the income from local taxes.