Gram Panchayat (transl. 'village council') is a basic governing institution in Indian villages. It is a political institution, acting as the cabinet of a village or group of villages. The Gram Sabha works as the general body of the Gram Panchayat. The members of the gram panchayat are elected directly by the people. The gram panchayat is headed by an elected President and Vice President, assisted by a Secretary who serves as the administrative head of the panchayat. The president of a gram panchayat is known as a "Pradhan" or "Sarpanch" in Northern India. There are about 250,000 gram panchayats present in India.
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👉 Gram panchayat in the context of Pargana
Pargana or parganah, also spelt pergunnah, equivalent to Mohallah as a subunit of Subah (Suba), was a type of former administrative division in the Indian subcontinent during the time of the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal and British Colonial empires. Mughal Empire was divided into Subah (Suba) or province headed by a Subahdar, which were further subdivided into sarkars or tarafs, which in turn were further subdivided into groups of villages known as parganas or Mahallas (Mahal). Depending on the size, the parganas may or may not be further subdivided into pirs or mouzas which were the smallest revenue units, consisting of one or more villages and the surrounding countryside. In Bengal, the Sarkar system was replaced in the early 18th century by the Chakla system. In the Punjab region, the British established new Punjab Canal Colonies in which the smallest unit [equivalent to village or Mauza or pir] were termed Chak. Above-mentioned revenue units were used primarily, but not exclusively, by Muslim kingdoms. After Independence of India in 1947, the parganas became equivalent to Block/Tahsil, and pirs or mahals became Grampanchayat.
The Mughal government in the pargana consisted of a Muslim judge and local tax collector. Under the reign of Sher Shah Suri, administration of parganas was strengthened by the addition of other officers, including a shiqdar (police chief), an amin or munsif (an arbitrator who assessed and collected revenue) and a karkun (record keeper).
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Gram panchayat
- 👉 Gram panchayat in the context of Pargana
- Gram panchayat in the context of Haryana
- Gram panchayat in the context of Community development block in India
- Gram panchayat in the context of Bangalore Urban district
- Gram panchayat in the context of Local government in India
Gram panchayat in the context of Haryana
Haryana (Hindi: Hariyāṇā, pronounced [ɦəɾɪːˈaːɳɑɐː]) is a state located in the northwestern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% (44,212 km or 17,070 sq mi) of India's land area. The state capital is Chandigarh, which it shares with the neighbouring state of Punjab; the most populous city is Faridabad, a part of the National Capital Region. The city of Gurgaon is among India's largest financial and technology hubs. Haryana has 6 administrative divisions, 22 districts, 72 sub-divisions, 93 revenue tehsils, 50 sub-tehsils, 140 community development blocks, 154 cities and towns, 7,356 villages, and 6,222 villages panchayats.
Haryana contains 32 special economic zones (SEZs), mainly located within the industrial corridor projects connecting the National Capital Region. Gurgaon is considered one of the major information technology and automobile hubs of India. Haryana ranks 11th among Indian states in human development index. The economy of Haryana is the 13th largest in India, with a gross state domestic product (GSDP) of ₹7.65 trillion (US$90 billion) and has the country's 5th-highest GSDP per capita of ₹240,000 (US$2,800).
Gram panchayat in the context of Community development block in India
In India, a community development block (CD block) or simply Block is a sub-division of District, administratively earmarked for planning and development. In tribal areas, similar sub-divisions are called tribal development blocks (TD blocks). The area is administered by a Block Development Officer (BDO), supported by several technical specialists and village-level workers. A community development block covers several gram panchayats, the local administrative units at the village level. A block is a rural subdivision and typically smaller than a tehsil. A tehsil is purely for revenue administration, whereas a block is for rural development purposes. In most states, a block is coterminous with the panchayat samiti area.
Gram panchayat in the context of Bangalore Urban district
Bengaluru Urban district is the most densely populated of the thirty-one districts that comprise the Indian state of Karnataka. It is surrounded by the Bengaluru North (formerly known as, Bengaluru Rural district) on the east and north, the Bengaluru South (formerly known as, Ramanagara district) on the west and the Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu on the south.
Bangalore Urban district came into being in 1986, with the partition of the erstwhile Bangalore district into Bangalore Urban and Bangalore Rural districts. Bangalore Urban has three taluks: Bengaluru City, Yelahanka and Anekal. It has seventeen hoblies, 872 villages, eleven rural habitations, five towns, one tier-three city and one tier-one city, administered by ninety-six Village Panchayats (Grama Panchayitis), ninety-seven Taluk Panchayats (Taluk Panchayitis), five Town Municipal Councils (Purasabes), one City Municipal Council (Nagarasabe) and one City Corporation (Mahanagara Palike).
Gram panchayat in the context of Local government in India
Local government in India is governmental jurisdiction below the level of the state. Local self-government means that residents in towns, villages and rural settlements are the people who elect local councils and their heads authorising them to solve the important issues. India is a federal republic with three spheres of government: union, state and local. The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments give recognition and protection to local governments and in addition each state has its own local government legislation. Since 1992, local government in India takes place in two very distinct forms. Urban localities, covered in the 74th amendment to the Constitution, have Municipality but derive their powers from the individual state governments, while the powers of rural localities have been formalized under the panchayati raj system, under the 73rd amendment to the Constitution.
Within the Administrative setup of India, the democratically elected Local governance bodies are called the "municipalities" (abbreviated as the "MC") in urban areas and the "Panchayati Raj Institutes (PRI)" (simply called the "panchayats") in rural areas.There are 3 types of municipalities based on the population (the criteria differs from state to state), Municipal Corporation (Nagar Nigam) with more than 1 million population, Municipal Councils (Nagar Palika) with more than 25,000 and less than 1 million population, and Municipal Committee (Town Panchayat) with more than 10,000 and less than 25,000 population.The Constitution does not define what exactly would constitute larger or smaller urban area or an area of transition from rural to urban. It has been left to the state governments to fix their own criteria. The Article also states that apart from population, other parameters such as density of population, percentage of population in non-agricultural employment, annual revenue generation etc., may be taken into account by the states. PRIs in rural areas have 3 hierarchies of panchayats, Gram panchayats at village level, Panchayat Samiti at block level, and Zilla panchayats at district level.