In the meantime, the term of office of some members of the working groups came to an end, and it was necessary to find a temporary solution to fill the vacancies. In view of the urgent need to keep the working groups functional, the Working Committee called an emergency RAD to approve an Interim Selection Process proposal which was created within the framework of existing PWG 2018 (Participatory Working Groups guidelines). 23 Dec 2019 – 2 Feb 2020.

The selection process, based on the Interim proposal, took place on 14-15 March 2020, just one week before the lockdown.

Restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 spread situation put many community activities on hold, including the GM to present the final version of the proposals by the taskforce.

RAS with the support of the Auroville Council organised a meeting (May 2020) with the selection process taskforce due to concerns about the time taken to bring the proposals to the community for RAD especially with new members needing to be selected in November 2020.

Recently the Working Committee and Auroville Council submitted a proposal, built on the approved Interim Selection Process, as they considered it had strong community support and so should be made available (with some amendments) as an additional option for the permanent selection of working group members. They requested it to go for a 2 week feedback period.

To avoid confusion, the RAS encouraged the taskforce, Working Committee, Auroville Council to reach a common position so all options can be presented to the community together. Initially agreement couldn’t be reached to have all the proposals presented to the community at the same time. After some further reflection the selection process taskforce agreed to incorporate the Working Committee’s proposal into a single GM to best serve the community, despite feeling that the situation compelled them to accept an otherwise unfair involvement in their community-led process (NB: this decision was not supported by Balu K and Paulette, members of the taskforce).

Hence, all the proposals will be presented together with space for comments, questions and feedback before the final versions are shared with the community for Resident’s Assembly Decision, with all the options clearly introduced and explained.