DM's nod must for payments above Rs 25K

Kolkata: The state Panchayat and Rural Development department has made it mandatory that gram panchayats need to take approval of the District Magistrates for making payments above Rs 25,000 of the fund allotted under Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) Grant and Performance Based Grant (PBG).

It may be mentioned that each gram panchayat has received around Rs 1.5 crore on an average under these grants and the step to make the District Magistrate's approval mandatory was taken after it was found that there were "weak monitoring of activities that are taking place at the gram panchayats resulting in increasing grievances of citizens..."

It has been mentioned that gram panchayats will have to send details of planned projects and its cost to the Block Development Officers who they will do the initial verification through a gram panchayat level-monitoring committee and then send the report to the DM for final approval of payment.