Rahul meets sarpanch delegation in Valley

All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Rahul Gandhi, who is on a two-day visit to the Valley, on Friday met with a delegation of panchayat members to hear their grievances regarding their security and empowerment. The sarpanchs in the Valley have been facing life threats by the militants and had recently resigned in large numbers.

The key demand of the panchayat members is that they should be given more powers. It seems that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi have a tough challenge to address the issue of the empowerment of panchayats in the state.

As Congress, an important ally of Omar Abdullah’s National Conference (NC)-led coalition government, is vociferously demanding the incorporation of 73rd Amendment into the state’s Panchayati Raj Act, NC is contending that state’s own Panchayat Act is sufficient enough to empower the panchayats.

While Gandhi has another tough issue-the rift within the state Congress, to tackle, the panchayat issue has assumed significance in wake of attacks on the members.

With the NC and Congress pulling in opposite directions over the issue of empowerment of panchayats, main Opposition in the state, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has accused the state government of “disrespecting grass root level decentralisation of power.”

Days before Gandhi’s visit to Kashmir, the youth wing of PDP held massive demonstrations in Jammu city, asking the chief minister “either to empower the panchayats or quit.”

The issue of empowerment of the panchayat in J&K figured in the recent meeting of Congress Working Committee (CWC) where Rahul Gandhi sought a "serious consideration" of the issue. Now that he himself is in the State, the Congress expects him to take up the issue with Abdullah.