Unelected Zila Parishads

WITH elections pending at Zila Parishad (district council) level for long, these bodies are being run by government-appointed personnel who are not accountable to the electorate. That act has made the bodies unrepresentative as well as ineffective in administration and governance. It has created problems rather than solutions to effective implementation of the annual development plan by impeding “bottom-up” decision-making process in civil administration. From what has been stated by the Local Government, Rural development and Cooperatives (LGRD) minister recently, we understand that the government has no plans to hold district council elections anytime soon.

The fact that these bodies have been running without elected representatives from December 2011, it is little wonder that governance at district level has suffered as decisions are now passed down from the centre, whereas it should have been the other way round. Thus, there is no way to ensure answerability of actions by such unelected councils except to the upper echelons. It deprives local constituents of availing themselves of proper services.

We are not surprised to find that the LGRD ministry is of the opinion that such local administrative bodies are “unnecessary.” It has become unnecessary only because the government has chosen to keep them as such. We believe that democracy is only as strong as its institutions, including local elected bodies such as Zila Parishads that form the middle rung of such institutions ideally connected upwards as well as to the grassroots.