Haryana Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2018.

Haryana Social Aspects of state

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has approved the draft of the Haryana Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2018.

Facts :

Under this Act, village-level committee will be constituted to review efficient delivery of public services and ensure transparency in development works upto the village level.
This is for the first time in the history of the state, social audit of development projects at the village level would ensure involvement of villagers in developmental activities for bringing complete transparency.
A village-level committee will comprise 10 non-official members representing civil society organisations, village institutions and organisations of workers, and disadvantaged groups.
The 10 members will be an ex-serviceman, a retired teacher, a retired engineer, an educated person of the village, a social worker, two members to be nominated by Deputy Commissioner (one woman and one SC), a head volunteer of the Gramin Vikas Ke Liye Tarun (GRAVIT) scheme and two beneficiaries of the scheme concerned.
Overall atleast three women members would be nominated.

Meghalya, the first state in country to pass this Act :

The Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2017, is the first state-level legislation explicitly aimed at institutionalising the procedure of auditing public works and programmes by the people residing in villages and urban localities through public hearings. Auditing at public hearings (jan sunwai) was initiated by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in the 1990s in Rajasthan, and the Meghalaya act has elements comparable to the Rajasthan Right to Hearing Act, 2012. Both these acts further the movement for transparency in governance, accountability of public servants to the citizens and redress of people’s grievances.

The functions of the illage-level committee formed under the Act are :

establish a systematic concurrent audit system by involving the trained Civil Society Organizations;
use proven statistical methods of randomization to cover representative sample of works being audited under different programmes.
advise the State Government on all matters concerning the implementation of this Act.
review the monitoring and grievance redressal mechanism from time to time and recommend improvements required.
promote the widest possible dissemination of information about the Schemes made under this Act.
monitoring the implementation of this Act.
commission research studies and surveys to suggest effective strategies of implementation to the Govt.
preparation of annual reports to be laid before the Assembly by the State Government on the status of the implementation of the programmes and schemes.
any other duty or function as may be assigned to it by the State Government.