Why did Malur Taluk Panchayat Office won Nation’s Best Award ?

“Bhai (brother)…It won National level award” Sanjay was telling me with a snoozy voice and half opened eyes. “Hmm….let’s see Sanjay, what we got on the field” I replied. Sanjay heard it and slept in his seat. Meanwhile, the bus from Majestic Bus station is picking up its speed and is heading to Malur, chasing the early morning fog of Bangalore.

Malur was once called as ‘Malligepura” which means the land of Jasmine flowers. It is located 30 Km away from district head quarter Kolar and 50 Km away from State capital – Bangalore. The Malur Taluk Panchayat has 28 Gram Panchayats consisting of 368 villages, all covering 2.36 lac population under its administration. We noticed that the Taluk Panchayat Office Complex is spread across 4-5 separate buildings and is clean and tidy.

[In Picture: Kudiyaneeru Gram Panchayat Office]

By 1030 hrs, the office has quite busy environment around. We did not feel boredom  as we were keenly looking forward knowing why and how Malur won National Award for Panchayat Employment and Accountability for the year 2013-2014, from President of India. In the same year, the office also received “Panchayat Sashakthikarana Puraskar” from Chief Minister of Karnataka. Since 2011, four Gram Panchayats under Malur Taluk Panchayat have won various awards like Nirmala Grama Puraskar, Gandhi Grama Puraskar.

Mr. Sanjeevappa (Executive Officer, Malur) had asked us to follow him to attend a weekly review meeting where in all 28 Panchayat Development Officers (PDOs) from their respective gram panchayats attend and review the progress and discuss other issues in their panchayats. The meeting was also chaired by Assistant Director of Malur Taluk Panchayat Office. It was really a nice experience to witness how such an important meeting progressed with great extent of coordination under magnificent leadership of the office. Many issues related to Housing Schemes (Ambedkar Yojana, Basava Awasa Yojana), Swatch Bharat Mission, Sakala, Status of complaints received, tax collection etc. were discussed and ways resolving the same were suggested to PDOs. We felt like it was more than a corporate progress review meeting.

When asked about Taluk panchayat committees, one of the officials has mentioned that there were 06 numbers of meetings were held in the previous year. The new council has formed all the three standing committees (Social Justice, Civic Amenities and Production committees) and also one committee for auctioning new commercial complex built as a Taluk Panchayat asset. A set of photocopies of minutes of meeting that was held before the Election Code of Conduct, was given to us.

After Office lunch, we then visited Kudiyaneeru Gram Panchayat. The PDO has explained us how does the biodiversity committee work on ground and how the selection of members in a committee does happen. He had also shown the recently built spacious Gram Panchayat Office and the meeting hall.

We returned to Malur. We really got surprised seeing the documentation work of this office. One of the officials had shown us how he documented the entire MNREGA work details for the year and also a document consisting of brief details about practices followed for some of the programs. A copy of these documents are uploaded here (We have taken the oral permission from officer for this). Please click on the below links to access these documents.

MALUR Awards-PhotosMALUR Photos MGNREGAMALUR Best Practices

Sanjay and I remained speechless for a while. We were really glad to know and see such an exemplary working system, efficient leadership working at grass root level. We then felt and understood why this Taluk Panchayat won the best award!!

Written by: Vikash Madduri and Sanjay Kumar Jayswal.