Chakchaka : 'GP No. One' in Cooch Behar

 

COOCH BEHAR, April 28: After taking oath as the pradhan of Chakchaka Gram Panchayat in Cooch Behar-II block on 10 July 2003, Mr Abani Mohan Das decided emphasising on health, education and loyalty to rules and norms laid down by the government. He was not a born politician but a man of cultural world. Song and music were his first love. But, as a pradhan he proved his worth and made Chakchaka the GP No. 1 in Cooch Behar.

 

Q: What you think is your best achievement?

 

Mr Das: We received the Nirmal Gram Puraskar from the President of the country, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on 4 May 2007 'on attaining full sanitation coverage in households, schools, Anganwadis, etc and for outstanding contribution in promotion of rural sanitation' in Chakchaka Gram Panchayat.

 

Q: How you turned all the twelve villages under your Chakchaka GP fully sanitised?

 

Mr Das: It was not easy at all. We made it mandatory for all residents of this GP to ensure that there were sanitary toilets in their dwellings and they use those. To get any certificates or facilities from the panchayat office they must satisfy us. We are still following this procedure. We did graffiti on walls and intensive campaign on sanitation. Sanitary toilet facility was extended to 17 primary schools, two high schools and 27 Anganwadi centres. We also provide disinfectants like phenyl to schools. To make the environment clean in Chakchaka Industrial Growth Centre complex we took up social forestry scheme and planted more than 25,000 trees at Chapaguri. We did all these with our own fund collected from our own resources.

 

Q: What are your other outstanding performances?

 

Mr Das: One of our priority sectors is health. There are five subsidiary health centres in our GP. We also launched a head sub-centre in a new building. It is first of its kind in the district. We provided weighing machines, blood pressure checking instruments and all necessary facilities to the sub-centres. We also launched a free homeopathic dispensary.

 

Q: What about education?

 

Mr Das: We set up six Shishu Shiksha Kendras for students of Class-I to Class-IV and one Madhyamik Shiksha Kendra for dropouts. We regularly visit all the schools to see that the students cut their nails. We distributed nail cutters to the schools to grow a healthy habit among the children. We also erected midday meal kitchen sheds to all the primary schools, SSKs and MSKs.

 

Q: What did you do to ensure supply of water to the villagers?

 

Mr Das: We sank 19 deep tubewells. Piped water supply was introduced in a major portion of the GP but remaining areas are yet to be covered. To ensure pure drinking water we implemented an Rs 20-lakh Sajaldhara scheme which is waiting for power connection to start functioning.

 

Q: How you feel as a successful pradhan?

 

Mr Das: Nothing succeeds like success. We became the first GP in the state following the self-evaluation programme in 2005-06. We were awarded with Rs 3.5-lakh as prize. We hope that we will do it again for the year 2006-07. The commissioner of state panchayat affairs, the chairman of state finance commission and the chairman of Assam state finance commission visited our GP and praised us for functioning it properly. They also praised our initiative to maintain the Nirmal Gram title. We are proud of all these.

 

Q: Are you contesting this time?

 

Mr Das: No. Recently I became the secretary of the CPI-M's local unit. According to party guideline a secretary should not be an elected public representative. Moreover, chair of the pradhan of this GP turned reserved for a woman candidate.