To provide transparent and corruption free administration at the village level, the Punjab Government would soon initiate auditing of the Panchayats’ accounts. The Sarpanchs, Panchs and Panchayat Secretaries would be trained by chartered accountants for keeping the accounts properly. It was today disclosed by Rural Development and Panchayat Minister, Punjab, Surjit Singh Rakhra in a press conference at Vikas Bhawan, Mohali. Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said that Punjab has become the first state in the country to initiate the auditing of Panchayat accounts. He said that Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has recently urged all the states to provide transparent and corruption free administration at the village level. He said that the Punjab became the first state to accept the recommendation of the Union Government. He further said that in this regard, the Punjab Government has already established liaison with the ‘committee on Public Finance and Government Accounting.’ He said that the first joint meeting with this committee has been held today. Rural Minister said that it was decided in the meeting that the Chartered Accountants, of this committee, would impart training to all the Panchayats. He said that for the purpose of training, groups have been formed clubbing ten blocks together. Rakhra said that due to ignorance and lack of awareness among the representative of Panchayats, many cases of financial embezzlement has come to the fore. He said that it was also noticed that Panchayats were remained unable to mobilize all their resources to generate more funds. He said that the training to be imparted by Chartered Accountants to the Panchayats, would enable them to attain funds from State and Union Governments and then to utilize the funds in proper prospective. He said that the Chartered Accountants would regularly monitor the accounts of Panchayats.Chartered Accountant Amarjit Arora, Chairman, Committee on Public Finance and Government Accounting said that the training to the Panchayats would help them keeping accounts in order and it would also be a check on financial mismanagement. Earliar in the day, a meeting was held under the chairmanship of Surjit Singh Rakhra to devise modalities of training to be imparted to the Panchayats. Amarjit Arora, Chairman, Committee on Public Finance and Government Accounting, Sunil K. Bhasin, Co-opt Member, Shalini Jindal, Secretary, Dr. Nikhil Saket, Senior Assistant Secretary and D.K. Singla took part in this meeting. Mandeep Singh Sandhu, Financial Commissioner, Balwinder Singh, Director and senior officials of Department of Rural Development and Panchayat, were also present.