DEFINING THE ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

Funding Agency: Decentralization Support Programme, Department of Local Self Government, Kerala

The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution of India made a great leap to decentralized governance system and powerful local self government institutions. The Amendment had paved the way for a uniform pattern of local self governance system in India. According to this, well defined administrative system has evolved for the local self government institutions, rural and urban. Kerala Government had passed the Panchayat Raj and Municipal Acts in 1994, in tune with the provisions of the Amendments. These Acts had gone through several amendments in the consequent years. Due to the absence of a well defined set of roles and responsibilities to the elected representatives in the local self government institutions led to a slow pace of developmental activities in their respective areas of work. Very little efforts were made to define the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives, though the decentralized administration has been started functioning for the last twelve years in Kerala. The present project has been taken up as a Technical Assistance Programme under the Decentralization Support Programme, Kerala to define the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives of local self governments in Kerala. The project was organized by Centre for Environment and Development, Thiruvananthapuram.

The project was carried out through brainstorming sessions and interviews with local government functionaries, experts, officials, social activists etc. The draft report thus prepared was circulated among selected people and a validation workshop was organized after this. The suggestions and recommendations from this workshop were analyzed in detail by a core group and finalized the report after detailed discussion. This report defines the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives of all the rural and urban local self government institutions like, Grama Panchayat, Block Panchayat, District Panchayat, Municipality and City Corporation. The roles and responsibilities of the elected representatives as a member, President, Vice President, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chairman, Vice Chairman and Standing Committee Chairman for each subject are clearly demarcated and classified. The report defines the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives in each tier of local governments such as Grama Panchayat, Block Panchayat, District Panchayat, Municipality and City Corporation separately. Both Obligatory functions and Suggestive functions are described for each tier of local governments. Both English and Malayalam versions are given separately in the same report.