Early Times Report
Srinagar, Sept 23: The Administrative Council which met under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha in Srinagar on Wednesday approved the proposal of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj to issue a notification for conducting elections to 13,257 vacant sarpanch and panch constituencies in the Union Territory.
The detailed schedule would be finalised by the election authority.
Filling of the vacant constitutional posts will ensure devolution of powers and proper grass roots planning. It will also ensure that the non-functional panchayats become functional.
Earlier, elections to 39,521 sarpanch and panch constituencies in 4,483 halqa panchayats were conducted in 2018 of which 13,257 positions are vacant due to resignation, removal, election of sarpanch as BDC chairpersons, death, and non-availability of candidates at the time of election.
Among 13,257 positions, there are 1,089 vacancies of sarpanches and 12,168 panch vacancies.
Pertinently, the elections to the vacancies notified earlier were postponed due to security concerns and the onset of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the Administrative Council also approved the re-allocation of 1,997 unfilled supernumerary posts for recruitment of registered Kashmiri migrants and non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits, who are willing to serve and settle down in Kashmir under the Prime Minister’s Package.
The Council also approved conducting the recruitment only on the basis of written test and skill test, without viva-voce, for the selection of suitable candidates through the J&K Services Selection Board within six months of the referral of posts by the Department of Disaster Management, Relief, and Rehabilitation& Reconstruction.
The re-allocated posts include Sub Inspector, Commercial Taxes, and assistant compiler in Finance Department (997), field assistant, field supervisor (Mushroom) and assistant store keeper in Agriculture, Production & Farmers Welfare Department (150), and depot assistant in Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs Department (300), and Class IV in Revenue Department (550).
In order to fast track the recruitments, the posts have been allocated with simpler recruitment rules on graduation, higher secondary and matric based qualification criteria.
The present re-allocation of posts is part of the 3,000 posts that were announced in 2015. So far, only 806 selections have been made and 1,997 posts remain unfilled due to various reasons.
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