IT making panchayats transparent: Minister

NEW DELHI, INDIA: India's panchayats are becoming more transparent with over 40,000 elected village bodies using online software for annual planning and another 70,000 for accounting under e-panchayat project, union Panchayati Raj Minister V. Kishore Chandra Deo said on Wednesday.

"Around 70,000 panchayats are making online voucher entries on PRIA Soft, an accounting software developed by our ministry and National Informatics Centre," said Deo while speaking at a seminar on local self-governance organised by Common Cause, a non-profit organisation and Institute of Social Sciences.

"Another 41,500 gram panchayats have uploaded their annual action plans online on a planning software called Plan Plus," he said, adding that nine more software tools have been developed to aid a panchayat functioning.

Deo was responding to an observation made by the organisers that the ministry was not following up on its own agendas of regulation of panchayat elections and decentralisation of power.

While the minister conceded that progress had been irregular, he claimed that "the panchayats and states were being incentivised for best performance".