Why in news?
The Rajasthan government recently abolished the condition of a minimum educational qualification to contest local body elections.
What does the 2015 act say?
- The Rajasthan Panchayati Raj (amendment) Bill, 2015, made Class X mandatory for contesting municipal elections and for contesting zila parishad or panchayat samiti elections.
- To contest the sarpanch elections, an aspirant from the general category must have passed Class VIII and a SC/ST aspirant must have passed Class V.
- It has also made a functional toilet mandatory in the house of a contestant.
- By this, Rajasthan became the first State in the country to fix a minimum educational qualification for contesting elections to the Panchayati Raj Institutions.
What were the concerns?
- According to the 2011 Census, the literacy rate was 52% for women and 79% for men in the state of Rajasthan.
- Hence, the move was ill-considered from the very beginning.
- The amendment was made based on the assumption that its voters tended to be younger.
- It was, however, an act of paternalism that militated against the basic assumptions of a liberal democracy.
- It penalised the people for failure to meet certain social indicators, when it is the state’s responsibility to provide the infrastructure and incentives for school and adult education.
- It has defeated the very purpose of the panchayati raj institutions, to include citizens in multi-tier local governance from all sections of society.
- Since the requirements had the effect of excluding the marginalised, it had pushed people to adopt unfair means to contest.
- There have been many cases of producing fake mark sheets to fulfil the eligibility criteria by the winners, following the passage of the bill in 2015.
- Also, there was no justification for insisting on educational qualification at the grassroots level when there was no such condition for elections to State Assemblies and Parliament.
- Though making toilets mandatory had given a push to the cleanliness drive, many homes didn’t have a functional toilets or were built only at the time of passage of the bill.
- Hence, the Rajasthan government recently abolished the provisions on educational qualifications, since laws should not become hurdles for the masses to exercise their rights.
What should be done?
- This is a progressive move and will restore the right to contest to a large section of the population in the State.
- The state of Haryana also made the minimum education qualification, following Rajasthan, to contest Panchayat poll as Class X for general candidates, Class VIII pass for women and Dalits, Class V for Dalit women.
- The Act was also upheld that year by the Supreme Court in Rajbala v. State of Haryana case in 2015.
- This shows that the temptation to expand educational eligibility requirements remains across the country.
- Hence, the recent decision of the Rajasthan government recast the debate on finding ways and means by which elected bodies are made more representative.
- In a liberal democracy, governments must desist from putting bars on who may contest, except in exceptional circumstances, such as when a candidate is in breach of particular laws.
- To mandate what makes a person a ‘good’ candidate goes against the spirit of the attempt to deepen democracy by taking self-government to the grassroots.
Source: The Hindu
