Katghora: The Gondwana Republic Party (Gongpa) has gone on an indefinite strike due to strongly protesting the recovery actions taken against some former Sarpanches of the Pali region. For the past eight days, there have been protesters sitting at the Shiv Mandir Chowk in Pali, and none of the administration officials have visited the place to learn about the problems of the protesters or Gongpa.
This rather sad response can be explained, or rather, it has invited a very stout response from the MLA of Pali-Tanakhar Tuleshwar Markam. He further threatened that if the administration did not look into the said problem, he would mobilize people and carry out a fierce rally by encircling the District Collector’s office. More importantly, Markam was keen to point out that the government and the administration would solely be answerable for any escalation.
It began with the construction works undertaken under the CM’s Comprehensive Development Scheme for the years 2015-16. The former Sarpanches were made to face recovery actions that were executed by the then Sub-Divisional Magistrate (Revenue), Pali, alleging that the former had betrayed public trust. After the charges were filed, the former SDM of Katghora issued a show-cause notice in which she was asked to explain her actions. In turn, the former Sarpanches provided completion certificates and other documents duly after the proceedings in Katghora District Court according to the directions of the Sub Divisional Officer (Revenue).
Still, they followed legal procedures, but the acting SDM at that time, in my opinion, did not care about their responses and carried out only one-sided recovery actions, which were reported to force them to pay the recovery amount or go to prison. When the former Sarpanches approached the High Court seeking a stay to implement the new Act, they secured a stay order. The stay order, nevertheless, was averted since the former Sarpanches, having no access to financial might, could not attend regular court proceedings.
Even in this context, Markam made it clear that a Sarpanch cannot be solely blamed for any wrongdoing in the construction work because even the quality of work is checked by an engineer and approved by the SDO.
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