Patna, Sept. 2: To usher in transparency and ensure effective participation of gram sabhas in selection of schemes to be taken up under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in the coming fiscal, the rural development department in Bihar has issued directives to all the districts to organise meeting in the panchayats on October 2 to get approval of the gram sabhas.

This would be followed by the uploading of the scheme details on the website of the district concerned so that anybody could have access to information about schemes that would be taken up using the MNREGA fund.

Rural development department principal secretary A. Santosh Matthew has written letters to all the district magistrates, deputy development commissioners and programme officers informing them about the proposed meetings to be held on October 2 and also the preparations they have to make in the run up to the meeting and also the various cut off dates by which they have to complete the different works.

One interesting point of this letter is that the principal secretary has observed that from the experiences gained from past practice, it appears that the selection of schemes through gram sabhas had only become a formality and there were complaints galore that selection of schemes were being done under the influence of certain selfish elements.

Admitting the fact, rural development department minister Nitish Mishra said: “We came across several schemes under MNREGA, which were not useful for villagers and the process of getting gram sabhas’ approval had become a mere formality.”