The gram panchayat results in December last year have thrown interesting developments pertaining to the empowerment of women. While 50% of the total seats were reserved for women, more than 50% of the elected representatives now are women — which means women also won in wards that were not reserved for them.
From a 93-year-old woman elected in Bidar district to a young U.S.-educated woman, who has become the president of Sokke Gram Panchayat in Jagalur taluk of Davangere district, this election has been good for women candidates. There are as many as 31 members from the third gender, including the one elected as president of Saligrama Gram Panchayat in K.R. taluk of Mysuru district. Several other members holds Ph.D, postgraduate, medical, engineering, and law degrees, a note from the Rural Development of Panchayat Raj Department said.
On Tuesday, these people were among the over 90,000 newly elected gram panchayat members who started a five-day training programme for capacity building through online classes.
The mega exercise, inaugurated by RDPR Minister K.S. Eshwarappa, is being conducted by the Abdul Nazeer Sab Administrative Training Institute in Mysuru. It will be conducted through 285 centres across the State. As many as 90,729 members have been elected from 5,728 gram panchayats.
During the training programme, the focus will be on training the new members in the panchayat raj system and the resource persons have been trained to this effect. A programme has been devised to provide continuous training to members with about 25 selected topics to be taught on the first and third Saturday of every month, press note said.
