What is MP Panchayat Darpan?

A panchayat is a self-governing body in villages of rural areas in India as opposed to the urban areas or suburban municipalities. It consists of 5  members known as “panchas”. These panchas are elected by the members of the gram sabha by a voting system. They work for the betterment of their village such as construction, repair of village roads, levy and collect local taxes,  execute government schemes related to employment, and many such works. 

 While panchayat works for the villagers and their welfare it was difficult for the people to know exactly the work done by them and what projects they carry. So, with the objective to provide the people the whole knowledge of the work of the panchayat and for the transparency in operations of panchayat and maintain continuous audits Madhya Pradesh became the first state in India to launch a portal online known as “MP Panchayat Darpan”. 

 What is MP Panchayat Darpan? 

It is a website launched by Madhya Pradesh chief minister Antony D’sa in the year  2014. The website was launched with the objective to provide the common people with knowledge of the work carried by the panchayat in the villages. The portal will share the details of the work undertaken by the panchayat, the amount spent by them for the respective project, and all the accounts. The portal is successfully run by the Panchayat & Rural Development Department,  Government of Madhya Pradesh. They launched the website  www.prd.mp.gov.in 

 The objective for starting the portal 

Earlier people in villages have no idea about the schemes and development projects carried by the panchayat in their villages and to know so they have to go here and there, wasting a lot of time and money as well. So, to ease this problem Madhya Pradesh Government came up with the solution to provide the details regarding the panchayat online in a portal. Now people need not to go anywhere and they can find out any information through the website on their computers or mobile phones. It provides information like e-payments, 

returns, development work, public representative, payments of salary, account statements, and other panchayat and rural development-related information. 

 List of schemes on portal run by the panchayat 

There are in total 84 schemes that are run by panchayat that are displayed on the portal with the name of the department that started the particular scheme.  Some of them are as follows: - 

S.no.	Department	Scheme
1	Panchayat Raj directorate	Stamp duty (State level)
2	Panchayat Raj directorate	Self Taxation Incentive Scheme
3	Panchayat Raj directorate	Minor Minerals
4	Rural Development Department	IAP Scheme
5	Rural Development Department	Indira Awas Yojana
6	Nirmal Bharat/ Clean India Campaign	Swachh Bharat Mission
7	Nirmal Bharat/ Clean India Campaign	Shala Toilet

The list above is non-exhaustive and in the portal contains names of other schemes as well. 

 Benefits from the portal 

There are many benefits that the portal will provide to everyone such as: - 

➢ Applicants can get information related to Panchayat on the portal.

 ➢ Applicants can easily register on the portal from their homes through an online medium. 

➢ The online medium will save both time and money for the applicant.

 ➢ On the portal, applicants can know all the information related to the development of their village, about the plans and projects issued.

 A look at the portal 

 Different tabs on the portal 

The portal is very user-friendly to operate and for each different information have maintained a different tab on it.  

• First tab we are going to talk about is the home tab: - 

Here you can see the members list of different activity groups. It shows their details such as registration date, district, village panchayat, gram, name of the member, designation, and mobile number. 

You can also see the status of the projects that are currently going on, meeting details of any department with its timing, date, and decision also. We can also see the geotagged photos of projects uploaded by the panchayat. 

Here sub-tabs are maintained for each department. For instance, a tab for  Panchayat and public representative, financial accounting, gram panchayat construction work management, and other such things. It also has a section to contact and news. 

• Second tab is about us: - 

Here details about the portal, its organizational structure is shared. Here the messages if any shared by the departments are also provided. 

• Other tabs in the portal are: - 

1. Instructions

2. Acts and rules 

3. Achievements 

4. Documents 

5. Reports 

6. Dashboard 

 Helpline number 

If anyone has any question or problem regarding the portal, they can contact on the helpline number provided by them or write them an e-mail regarding the same. 

Helpline number 0755-2552582 

E-mail ID dirpanchayat@mp.gov.in 

 A great initiative 

When today everyone wants everything, digital this was the great initiative taken by the government of Madhya Pradesh. Digitalising the work of panchayat of the people and for their ease.