Meghalaya | Women should not be barred from being village heads: TUR on Village Administration Bill

TNT News | SHILLONG, July 2, 2018

Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) has submitted various suggestions on the Village Administration Bill, one of which is the need to elect women as village heads to the Committee on VAB set up by the KHADC.

TUR said the Bill, passed in 2015, has to be gender just – all the adults of the village, men and women, have to elect the Dorbar executive and village head.

TUR added that there cannot be a bar on women being elected as the village head/chief.

TUR said that the VAB should be about "the people of the village". The Dorbar and not the Rangbah Shnong or the Dorbar executive as real power has to vest in village residents and thereby the need for Section 8 to be drastically amended.

"Untrammelled power of district council as expressed in Section 19 in the present VAB to remove the popularly elected Dorbar executive and Rangbah Shnong has to be repealed," it suggested.

"Rather than having a separate VDC with its general council, it would be better to devolve financial powers to the Dorbar Shnong itself and all rural development money should be routed through the Dorbar Shnong to break the stranglehold of the rural development bureaucracy and the MLAs, MPs and MDCs on rural development programmes in the state," TUR said, adding that the VDC has to be abolished.

It further added that the VAB should also initiate participation of indigenous tribal minorities such as the Karbi, Rabha, Hajong, Tiwa/Lalung in local self-governance.