With gram panchayat ( village council) heads and members up in arms against e-panchayat system, Haryana government on Saturday dismissed the concerns and said it will help in ensuring better financial management and transparency of village councils.

On this concern that e-panchayat system allows two supplementary plans in a financial year, an official spokesperson said to address this concern, the state has decided to approach Union government.

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The spokesperson said the Haryana government would urge the Centre to make a provision for three supplementary plans, one each in first week of July, October and January, and an additional emergency supplementary plan which can be adopted anytime during the year.

“There is a concern that implementation of e-Panchayat would result in delay in development works, as it would not be possible to make daily cash payments to the labour. This concern is misfounded, as e-Panchayat permits generation of Contra vouchers and Payment vouchers, which can be used for cash withdrawals and for labour payments,” the spokesperson said.

“Once e-Panchayat is fully implemented, anybody, anywhere can see the status of financial resources, the physical and financial progress of the development works in any gram panchayat at any time. This will not only facilitate grievance redressal, reduce audit objections and disciplinary actions against sarpanches (village heads) and gram sachivs (village secretaries),” the spokesperson added.

The villagers would have better access to gram panchayat records leading to greater transparency. The gram panchayat records will be available online and will be temper proof, the spokesperson said.

The e-panchayat project is one of the 31 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). It is a flagship program of Union ministry of Panchayati Raj, which is being implemented across the country.

The project is one of its own kind as it offers automation of office processes thus enabling e-governance and at the same time provides information in the public domain to make the governance transparent and effective.

Haryana started e-panchayat project in the year 2010. About 60 per cent of the state’s village panchayats have adopted the system. The state government has fixed April 1 as the deadline for all panchayats to adopt this system.

But earlier this week, thousands of sarpanches and panchayat members held a protest against the move. The next day, the government suspended nine panchayat secretaries for participating in the protest.