“Unlike the proviso to Rule 9 of the 2007 Rules, which enables a Special Officer to submit a representation only after taking into consideration the views expressed by the members of the Gram Sabha at a special meeting convened for the said purpose, Rule 12(2) of the 2007 Rules does not require either a special meeting of the Gram Sabha to be convened or for the views of the members expressed in the Gram Sabha to be taken into consideration, by the Special Officer before submitting his representation in reply to the show cause notice issued by the Government. As they have been appointed, to exercise the powers and perform the functions of the subject gram panchayats and its sarpanches, it is the Special Officers who are entitled to submit representations, on behalf of the gram panchayats, in reply to the show-cause notices issued by the Government, under Rule 12(2) of the 2007 Rules, proposing to cancel the notification issued earlier under Section 3(1) of the 1994 Act, in the exercise of its powers under Section 3(2)(f) thereof. In terms of the proviso to Rule 12(2), if no reply is submitted to the show-cause notice within a period of ten days from the date of its receipt, the Government is empowered to pass such orders as it deems fit. It is not even the petitioners case that the Special Officers of the concerned gram panchayats have objected to the merger of these eleven gram panchayats, and in constituting them as a Nagar Panchayat. While it would, undoubtedly, have been desirable for an elected gram panchayat to have expressed its views on whether or not the gram panchayats should be merged in order to constitute a Nagar Panchayat, the question, whether or not the Government should have waited for an elected body of the Gram Panchayat to be constituted
