STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: District Development Council (DDC) Jammu Chairman, Bharat Bhushan Bodhi said it is a matter of great achievement and satisfaction that the PRI system has been finally established in Jammu and Kashmir after over seven long decades and for this full credit goes to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The DDC Chairman stated this while inaugurating his office at Udhaiwala, Bohri here today in the presence of District Development Council members, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Minister Sham Lal Sharma and Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Anshul Garg besides several senior functionaries of Jammu administration.
In his address, Bharat Bhushan asserted that it is the dynamic Prime Minister Narendra Modi who deserves full appreciation and credit for strengthening PRIs at the grass root level after the successive governments miserably failed to do thus failing to restore democracy at grass roots level.
Terming the efforts of successive earlier regimes as half hearted and cosmetic, the senior BJP leader said that they conducted elections of Panch and Sarpanch level only while the Block Development Council and District Development Council elections were never held in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, he said while accusing the former governments of holding all the power in their hands thus denying the percolation of benefits to the grass roots level.
Asserting that PRI is a system of rural local self-government in India, Bharat Bhushan said that it is based upon Gandhian philosophy of self governance in which the management of local affairs remains in the hands of such local bodies who are directly elected by the local people. He appealed to all the DDC members to work relentlessly to achieve the objective of 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 to build democracy at the grass roots level by carrying out the task of rural development in full swing in their respective areas of jurisdiction.