By
Gaurav Bakshi – Actor & Founder HelpdesQ
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Gram Sabha organized by Village Panchayat Taleigao becomes Battleground. BJPs Panaji MLA Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate Orders Abuse & Assault of Citizens
Elections take place at primarily 3 levels in our country – 1. Village Panchayat or City Corporation Level, 2. State Level and 3. National Level, where the majority elected body is expected to provide representation to the people to deliver the wishes of the people. At the Village level, ward members are elected in the Panchayat elections and these ward members elect a Sarpanch. Together, the Village Panchayat members, in their capacity as the elected public servants are to be the guardians of the affairs at the Village Level. They are to provide a platform for effective & transparent governance, expression of peoples voices, addressing of concerns, decision making based on majority etc. The Gram Sabha, mandated to be conducted quarterly, is one such platform, and intended to allow a direct, grassroots-based, bottoms up functioning of participative democracy.
The Taleigao Village Gram Sabha took place on Sunday, April 18th at the Taleigao Community Center, after a gap of over 1 year. Proceedings from this Gram Sabha represent the site of a massive brawl than a public meeting. Decide for yourself, based on the below pics.
Repeated Abuse & Assault witnessed by Women, Senior Citizens and All Present
Words such as “F*cking B*stard, As*h*le, M*ther F*cker, Hij*da” have been captured on camera – spoken specifically by an employee of the Village Panchayat, by the son of an elected female Ward member and others, claiming to be under orders of Jennifer & Atanasio Monserrate, the wife-husband duo MLAs of Taleigao & Panjim respectively. The same son of the elected female Ward member assaulted and threw one citizen to the floor, in front of dozens present and was earlier seen shouting, interrupting & intimidating virtually every citizen who was given an opportunity to speak at the Gram Sabha & could be seen constantly coordinating with other ward members and the Sarpanch on when to disrupt. All of this has been captured on camera.
Shocking Inaction by Sarpanch Agnelo D’Cunha & Secretary Peter Martins
Even after being informed about specific & repetitive abusive language and the assault, they did nothing. (Video recording available). They have no right to continue in their positions if they cannot protect the public in proceedings conducted by them. They must tender their resignation. Abuse and violence were a clear sign that insecurity and fear have taken over the panchayat employees and elected ward members.
A Citizens Victory
It was heartening to see that all citizens present, despite being subject to the above, stood strong, stood firm, did not react to the abuse and violence. Loud and clear voices spoke of the issues and ensured that the entire Political Muscle was rattled heavily. They are emboldened to now maintain oversight into all aspects of the Village Panchayat functioning.
One oft-heard truth was experienced at this Gram Sabha
Unfortunately, our elected village representatives are NOT the upholders of the law, generally have little idea about the law, and are driven by the political motives of their masters in their quest for power and money. The Sarpanch and the ward members were acting as pawns, acting upon pre-ordained orders & did not show any capacity to use their own intelligence.
[Democracy Health Check: Atanasio Monserrate is MLA Panjim, his wife Jennifer Monserrate is MLA Taleigao & IT & Revenue Minister, his son Junior Monserrate is Mayor Panjim, his ex-PA is MLA St Cruz, his current PA is Sarpanch Village Taleigao, Atanasio Monserrate is Chairperson of GPPDA – the body that controls Planning & Development of the Greater Panjim area, his panel controls the Municipality of Panjim. He is also the man who orchestrated 10 congress MLAs, including himself, jumping ship to BJP. (Rumour has it that his next ship may be the NCP, in his ambition to become Chief Minister of Goa)]
Planned and Pre-Meditated Disruption of Proceedings
An elected women ward member & another women employee held the hand of a woman speaking on the mic and attempted to grab the mic away and stop her from speaking. Another elected male ward member kept repeatedly saying “Don’t intimidate, don’t intimidate” on the mic (upon instruction from the Sarpanch, as loudly proclaimed on the mic by this ward member) in an attempt to in fact intimidate, create confusion and distract from real issues. This was done to every speaker who, in a cordial manner, was pointing out concerns of the public. Female Panchayat employees and elected female ward members were stationed to specifically target female citizen speakers, while male panchayat employees, elected male ward members, and other men parked around the hall were ensuring disruption to male citizen speakers.
Criminality of Governance is complete
Goons hired by Atanasio Monserrate abused and intimidated citizens during the entire proceedings. Criminal elements were specifically kept at the venue to disrupt, provoke, abuse…repeatedly and continuously during the entire proceedings. (The author wrote to the Panjim and Taleigao MLAs about the violence asking them to come clean and act against such criminal elements, both have stayed silent & chosen not to respond).
Video Recording Mandatory, but refused by Sarpanch Agnelo
The law mandates video recording of Gram Sabha proceedings. The Sarpanch has deliberately and with clear intent to keep proceedings opaque refused to allow this in the previous Gram Sabha and continued his stand in this Gram Sabha. Well, several citizens took the initiative of bringing their own cameras and recorded the entire proceedings, therefore allowing the world to see the truth of such citizen sabhas that have been entirely overtaken by brash political muscle power. These videos will be released in due course.
COVID norms violated by Monserrate’s Men
While the seating arrangement was keeping social distancing in mind, the sarpanch & secretary, strangely allowed groups of their supporters to gather by the railing in hordes, standing neck to neck, as they went on an abusive rampage.
Despite the above, let’s see what transpired during the Gram Sabha proceedings.
Budget Financial Year (FY) 2021-22, Rs 25 Lakhs for “Hall AC Maintenance” and other glaring anomalies
Upon presentation, members pointed out that the expenditure of the community hall is shown to be much higher than the receipts of the community hall. Why in the world would the Panchayat budget for a loss, by showing Rs 25 lakhs community hall maintenance for ACs etc? It was smelling of inefficiency and corruption. It was bizarre. Bizarre was the explanation given by the Sarpanch and Secretary that these were “only budget” numbers and may change. (Click to review Budget FY 2021-22)
Promise of eGovernance, ZERO Budget for eGovernance, Lack of Transparency
Upon being asked to make all expenditure public, the Sarpanch claimed that all Receipts & Expenditures (Past and Current), to the minutest details, will be put up on a revamped website to be launched in a months’ time. However, when asked to make such documents available now, he refused outrightly. He was repeatedly heard saying “I will only give information one on one and not to others”. Several citizens made suggestions to make the Receipts & Expenditures transparent and available to the citizens. Checks and balances to prevent fraud of public money have not been put in place. Sarpanch Agnelo evaded these repeatedly, first asking one citizen, ridiculously, to “meet him one on one” to understand the actual Profit & Loss statement FY 2020-21 and Budget FY 2021-22, then simply refusing to share any documents. A perusal of the Budget FY 2021-22 shows zero rupees budgeted for Digital/Web/Social Media/eGovernance initiatives. (Click to review Budget FY 2021-22). Forget eGovernance, there is no basic website (despite court orders mandating websites), no video recording of Gram Sabhas (despite regulations mandating this, as noted earlier), and notice of meetings are printed on paper and pinned on a notice board inside the Panchayat Office even today. Oh, did I mention they don’t have a working email!
[Democracy Health Check: Under the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005, citizens have the right to access every rupee of expense and receipts, contract payment details (besides various other information) from the government. This is a powerful tool to bring transparency and often leads to massive corruption exposure by way of analyzing such payments (remember the Rs 400 toilet paper role exposure during the Commonwealth Games).
A simple handwritten note, with a Rs 10 revenue stamp is sufficient and requires the Public Information Officer (PIO) to provide the documents no later than 30 days, and if not done can lead to penal action against the PIO.]
Resolution to scrap CZMP Plan with Port Limits
When a resolution was being discussed with 2 citizens present proposing and seconding, the Sarpanch, specifically, insisted he would put the name of former Sarpanch Janu Rosario, as the proposer and no one else. The resolution was however adopted.
Restoration of St Inez Creek
Citizens pointed out years of unfulfilled promises of the St Inez creek restoration and that something needs to be done. The Sarpanch claimed that a Dutch organization has been hired by CCP, and this is a joint project between Panjim & Taleigao and will be addressed in the next few months.
Committees created without informing the Gram Sabha, in rank violation of regulations
The Gram Sabha was informed that various ward/citizen committees had been created. Members expressed shock as to why no notice, procedure, member qualification etc was given to citizens. Several citizens objected.
[Democracy Health Check: Laws mandate various committees at the Village level be formed to ensure effective contribution from capable citizens towards best outcomes for the Village. Across the state, courts have found such committees are often not created, and when created they include planted members representing the interest of specific political masters. This appears to be the case in Taleigao as well. For all key decisions, the elected habitually, deliberately, and disdainfully do NOT follow any due procedure, mandated by law.
Illegal Land Filling
When one citizen pointed out that illegal filling was taking place despite an order, the Sarpanch claimed they were helpless to stop this illegality.
[Democracy Health Check: Illegal landfilling is a widespread criminal act, used by criminals to evade laws that prevent a change of land use (eg: Agricultural land, marshland or low-lying land) for construction / commercial purpose & by illegally filling the land the criminals can claimed that the law allows such land use, “if filled”.]
Stray Dogs & Cattles, Lack of Park Maintenance
A citizen from Nagali Hills expressed anguish about several issues and pleaded for immediate solutions – massive stray dogs menace (due to which no local can even go for a walk), lack of upkeep of parks in Nagali Hills, massive electricity fluctuations (leading to appliances burning out) & constant outages and lack of garbage collection. The Sarpanch claimed that the Park maintenance contractor was stationed at the Parks and taking full care. The citizen responded saying the Sarpanch had no idea, the contract did not show up and little maintenance was being done. On a positive note, he said that an accurate dog count was being done, which will lead to funds being released for dog sterilization. Unsatisfactory responses were given to other issues.
[Democracy Health Check: Budgets allocated for Dog sterilization by the government are done based on outdated poorly conducted dog count by the government, which is a small fraction of the actual number. Therefore, funds eventually released are insufficient to sterilize the entire population, leading to large wastage of public funds, in the tens of crores, across Goa. Of the funds released, some contracting organizations are known to put fake numbers and don’t in fact sterilize the dog population, leading to the ineffectiveness of the entire exercise.]
Various other issues discussed included strewn and non-collection of Garbage, non-Functional Electricity Poles etc.
Panchayat needs to wake up to the new-age world of today (the days of opaqueness and bullying citizens are over)
- eGovernance must be expeditiously enabled
- Digital presence across platforms for Citizen-Panchayat communication
- Put in clear checks and balances and bring transparency on all public expenditure
- Set up committees as per laws and regulations and support citizens to contribute towards best practices and good governance
- Show on your website exactly what progress has taken place, with clear timelines & costs
- Provide all past, current and proposed project details with costs
- Provide all rules and procedures and how you have followed these for all decision making on your website.
- List all rights of citizens on your website.
- List all services and procedures for all services on your website.
- List all grants and schemes and procedures to access these on your website.
What can Citizens do?
- Be very careful on who you vote for next. What you vote, is what you get.
- Check the antecedents of the candidates. Investigate the background, businesses and you will find damning revelations.
- Participate in your local Gram Sabha, stay informed and stand up for your rights.
- File RTIs to understand every rupee spent and hold your elected representatives accountable (Massive corruption in government takes place in government contracts and tenders).
- Have clear oversight on the functioning of the panchayat, to enforce regulations and law-based governance (You must know your rights and local laws).
- Approach courts in the event the elected bodies no not follow laws and regulations (yes, ironic) or are found to abuse power.
It is for right-minded citizens to stand up and ensure that all forms of governments act in our interest and in the interest of mother nature.
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About HelpdesQ: HelpdesQ has found solutions to hundreds of government & legal complications for businesses and consumers, without a single rupee paid towards corruption, by removing fear and creating transparency never seen before in the government system. Website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
Gaurav Bakshi is an Emerging Citizens Rights Leader, Actor and Founder HelpdesQ.in. Gaurav was co-founding member of the historic anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. He has been seen on 150+ panel discussions and interviews on BBC Worldwide, CBC, CNN-IBN, NDTV, Star News and other national and international media. He is regularly invited as speaker at various institutions and conferences such as IIT, The INK Conference as well as political and social panels. Gaurav and his team work with India’s leading legal, governance and political advisers. He has an MBA from Georgia State University, USA and 15+ years industry experience in the US, Europe & India. As an actor, he has completed 175+ projects on TV, Digital and Print. About Gaurav: www.heldpesq.in/about On social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
