Amidst unanimous demand from members of all parties in the Legislative Council to increase the honorarium of gram panchayat members, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister K.S. Eshwarappa has convened a meeting of Council members elected from local bodies and officials on March 14 to work on modalities.
His announcement came after members cutting across parties highlighted the plight of the gram panchayat members whose monthly honorarium was last raised in 2017 to ₹1,000. The issue was raised by all the 25 members in the 75-member Upper House who have been elected from the Local Authorities constituencies where gram panchayat members are the electorate. There are about 91,500 gram panchayat members in the State, and half of them are women.
Karnataka will also send a delegation of MLCs elected from the local authorities to Kerala and West Bengal to study their models, he announced. “Let us do what is practically possible.”
He also pointed to a proposal to increase honorarium in 2021 that has been rejected by the Finance Department.
Earlier, raising the issue, Opposition members pointed out to a promise by the BJP State president Nalin Kumar Kateel during the elections to the Upper House from Local Authorities constituency that the honorarium would be hiked to ₹10,000 a month besides implementing the Kerala model.
Legislators spoke about the socioeconomic conditions of GP members, who in many cases would be landless labourers, small vendors or semi-skilled workers but get a chance to be elected due to reservation. Many a times their literacy levels are also very low.
