Hyderabad, July 4 -- Telangana Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Minister Seethakka on Friday, July 3, urged the Centre not to assess the performance of gram panchayats solely on the basis of tax collections and instead give greater weightage to public services, sanitation, transparency and governance indicators.

Participating in a conference in New Delhi, chaired by Union Panchayat Raj Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh on the recommendations of the 16th Finance Commission for rural local bodies, Seethakka called for special consideration for tribal, Scheduled and remote area gram panchayats with limited own-source revenue generation capacity.

She requested the Centre not to impose additional tax burdens on gram panchayats in tribal and bac...