Three decades after India reserved a third of Panchayat seats for women, many of them still don’t get to govern. The ministry of panchayati raj has confirmed to Parliament that “proxy representation,” where male relatives of elected women Pradhans effectively run their offices, remains a real problem in local self-government, despite years of reservation and training programmes meant to fix it.
Event Context
The disclosure came in a written reply submitted to the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, in response to a question by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Smita Uday Wagh on capacity-building for women elected representatives. Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh, alias Lalan Singh, said a Supreme Court-directed advisory committee, formed in September 2023, examined the issue and submitted its report in February 2025, which the ministry has accepted.
“The Advisory Committee recommended that the State Governments take necessary measures, including legal safeguards, capacity-building, social audits, and penal provisions, to eliminate proxy leadership in Panchayati Raj Institutions and ensure real empowerment, autonomy and accountability of elected women representatives,” the ministry said. A task force set up on April 17, 2025 is now working on an implementation roadmap for states to act on these recommendations.
The reply, however, did not disclose any numbers on how widespread the practice is: no state-wise data, no survey figures, nothing that quantifies its scale.
Panchayats are a state subject, but the Centre funds training through the Revamped Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan (RGSA), running since 2022-23. Figures provided in the written reply show 3,414,342 women elected representatives have been trained under the scheme nationwide between 2022-23 and July 10, 2026. A newer, specialised leadership module, Sashakta Panchayat Netri Abhiyan, was launched in March 2025, and has trained 153,616 women so far. The ministry’s reply lists the launch date as 11 March 2025, though earlier press releases from the ministry itself had listed the launch at a national workshop in Delhi on 4 March 2025, ahead of International Women’s Day.
Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra account for the largest numbers of women trained under RGSA over five years, at roughly 390,000, 200,000 and 485,000 respectively. Yet training volumes offer no real indicator of whether women translate that training into independent decision-making once back in office, which is the very gap the advisory committee was set up to study.
Player Focus
The ministry’s Localisation of Sustainable Development Goals framework includes “Theme 9: Women-Friendly Panchayat,” meant to push panchayats to commit to gender-focused development planning. In Maharashtra, the number of panchayats adopting this theme rose from 255 in 2023-24 to 1,364 in 2024-25, then fell to 1,557 in 2025-26 and just 222 so far this year. In Jalgaon district specifically, adoption has stayed marginal throughout: two panchayats in 2023-24, 62 in 2024-25, 47 in 2025-26, and zero recorded so far in 2026-27.
Nationally, 744 panchayats, about one per district, have been picked to become “Model Women Friendly Gram Panchayats,” including 34 in Maharashtra and only one in Jalgaon.
Match Outlook
Taken together, the numbers point to a familiar pattern flagged by researchers and activists for years: reservation gets women onto the ballot and into office, but structural power within the household and the panchayat often stays with men. The government’s own advisory committee report and task force suggest it recognises the gap; the test now will be whether states convert those recommendations into enforceable safeguards.
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Maharashtra’s Gram Panchayat Act mandates four Gram Sabhas a year, each preceded by a Mahila Sabha, or women’s assembly, a provision the state has told the Centre is being followed. But the ministry’s reply also confirmed that no Panchayat Leadership and Governance Resource Centre for women representatives exists anywhere in Maharashtra, including Jalgaon, despite the specific ask.
In Jalgaon, only 248 women elected representatives have been trained under the specialised leadership module so far, against 10,966 across the state.
