Gram Sansad
The West Bengal Panchayat Amendment Act 1994 has elaborately discussed about the Gram Sansad and Gram Sabhas. According to this Act for each constituencies of the Gram Panchayat there will be one Gram Sansad and all voters of that constituency are the members of this Gram Samsada.
Following the decision of the Village Panchayat the Pradhana of the Gram Panchayat conveys the meeting of Gram Samsad. A notice intimating the place, time and agenda of the meeting is walled up in the notice board and also announced over microphone and beating of drums in the roads. Minimum seven days notice is required for the meeting. For the Quorum of the meeting the presence of minimum one-tenth of the total number of members is necessary. If the Quorum is not reached, the meeting will be adjourned. In that case the same adjourned meeting will be convened again after seven days in the same place and at the same time.
The Pradhan of Gram Panchayat and in his absence the Upapradhan (Deputy Pradhan) chairs the meeting. If both of them are absent the meeting of the Gram Samsad is presided over by the most elderly person of that constituency. Generally the half-yearly meeting of the Gram Samsad is convened in the month of November and the annual meeting is held in the month of May. The last audit reports of the village Panchayat along with the opinions of the members about the estimated budget for the following year are discussed in the half-yearly meeting of Gram Samshad. The amended budget of the previous year of the Panchayat along with the audit report of the last six months and reports of the activities of the current year etc. are discussed in the annual meeting.
The village Samshad has to look after many things like, giving importance for implementing various projects maintenance for the overall economic development of the region, to give opinions about various developmental projects for establishing social justice, to materialize different projects and to ascertain popular participation in its maintenance and equal distribution by establishing the beneficiary committees empowered to look after it, to preserve and maintain integrity and consolidation among the people of the region, and to create popular initiative for implementing various positive programme to ensure social welfare, to evaluate or criticize the attitude of indifference or negligence on the part of the Panchayat Pradhan or other members of the Panchayat in developmental activities etc.
