All village Panchayats in Goa have been asked to submit development plans so as to avail central funds under the district development committee grants.

A high-level meeting was held at the chamber of the director of Panchayats, Mr Menino D’Souza and was attended by joint-director, department of planning statistics, Mr V B Saxena; North Goa zilla panchayat chairperson, Ms Amol Morajkar; South Goa ZP member, Ms Nelly Rodrigues; GBA member, Ms Sabina Martins and others to discuss the future course of action keeping in view that Goa has been missing out on its share of the central funds for village development over the years.

Ms Sabina Martins of the GBA said forming of village development plan involves three processes, mainly a visionary exercise wherein the members have a plan in mind for the village. This is followed by data collection and segregation sectorwise along with activity mapping followed by forming of the village plans based on the requirements of the village by discussing the same through gram sabas. She said that unfortunately the villages do not have proper knowledge and data of villages and informed about the model used in other states in the country to implement the central government’s scheme to decentralise the planning process at the grass root-level. She said that there was very limited time left and the plans should be prepared before the year-end so that they can be submitted to the central government for making budgetary allocations.