S. V. GANGAPURWALA, J. :- Heard.

2. The Petitioners seek directions to treat all the Grampanchayat employees as the State Government Employees and further claim that they are entitled for the benefits of the salaries and wages, allowances and pensionery benefits on par with the State Government employees, Zilla Parishad employees and Municipal employees.

3. Mr.Dixit, learned Senior counsel in his usual lucid style put forth following propositions :

(a) The Village Panchayat is the instrument of the Rural Development and is a local self - Government. The functioning of the village Panchayat is governed by the Village Panchayat Act, 1958. Various functions are entrusted to the village panchayats and for the purposes of achieving various objects, power is given to appoint the local staff by the Village Panchayat. Some of the functions performed by the Panchayat are sanitation, vaccination programme, maintenance of village roads, small irrigation water supply scheme, collection of house tax and octroi, promotion of social welfare health and family planning programmes. All these works are in the nature of supplementary government functions. The power is given to the Village Panch