Governance At The Doorstep: Kashmiris Flock To Meet Visiting Officials Under Governor’s ‘Back To Village’ Initiative

The Governor Satya Pal Malik’s “Back To Village” program in Jammu and Kashmir saw common people meeting government officials and telling them about their grievances.

Starting last Thursday, the program covering all 4500 Panchayats will continue till 27 June under which a gazetted officer will go to villages to hear people’s grievances, reports India TV.

"The officer will spend two days and one night at the panchayat and will hold meetings with elected 'panchs' and 'sarpanchs', hold 'graam' and 'mahila sabhas' in addition to other grassroots level interactions,” said Sheetal Nanda, secretary, rural development department. She added that the basic objective of the programme was to move governance from its seat of operation to the doorsteps of the people in villages.

Several officers took to Twitter to share their experience of meeting common people.

The officer who visits the Panchayat will be designated as the Nodal Officer for that village.  According to the guidelines given in 20-page booklet given to the officer, he will collect information from the village.

"Five main problems will be highlighted from each Panchayat. After collection of all the data, we will put it out on our website and respective administrative departments will be asked to attend to these problems on top priority basis," said Nanda, adding that after a few years, the nodal officer will go back to the village and take stock of the redressal of the problems highlighted during their 'back to village' deployment.