New panchayat law will make Haryana's illiterate leaders stand in a corner
Haryana is set to hold the panchayat polls under a new law which bars illiterates and school dropouts from the fray. Though the Supreme Court has upheld the validity of the amendment, the new law raises fears of frustrating the object of direct elections envisaged under our constitutional scheme by influencing the outcome.
While the Supreme Court examined at length the statistics on educational qualifications of the people of Haryana to conclude that the amendment had a nexus with the object of promoting literacy, it overlooked a crucial statistical analysis of the 2010 panchayat election results, which shows that a vast majority of the office bearers chosen by the people in the last election would stand disqualified under the new rule mandating a minimum educational qualification of Class 10 (matriculate) for general and Class 8 and Class 5 for women and Dalit candidates, respectively.
The court analysed the statistics on literacy to arrive at the percentage of people who would be qualified to contest elections even after the introduction of the new rule but did not take note of the fact that over 67 per cent of the candidates who won in the 2010 elections were illiterates or non-matriculates. It was a clear oversight as the figures were there in an application filed before the court by the state government. “The last general elections (held in 2010) to the three tiers of panchayats held in 2010, there were 67,827 elected members and out of it, 20,392 were illiterate, 25,334 were under matriculate,” the state government said.
It should not be out of place to mention that provisions in the Constitution allowing Parliament to prescribe additional qualifications for the MPs and MLAs were opposed in the Constituent Assembly on the ground that it "might enable the party in power to defeat its opponents".
“The party in power by their majority may pass laws and prescribe qualifications for candidates, which might help the party against their opponents,” professor Shibban Lal Saksena said, while asking Dr BR Ambedkar to withdraw the power. Though prof Shibban’s concern was not shared by the majority, the fear did not seem to be totally unwarranted.
The statistical analysis of the result which escaped the attention of the court shows that the law would put an end to the political career of many successful leaders at the panchayat level. It would not have been easy for the court to justify the bar against contesting elections on a majority of the elected leaders as “reasonable”. Though the court noted that a large number of voters would be barred from contesting elections, it emphasised that the “numerical dimension” did not matter if it was constitutionally permissible to debar certain classes of people “unless the prescription is of such nature as would frustrate the constitutional scheme”.
The court stressed that Article 243F of the Constitution empowered the state legislature to lay down additional disqualifications for posts in panchayats. Interestingly, similar powers have been given to Parliament with respect to members of Parliament and state legislatures. Though the provisions were incorporated despite caution by prof Sibban, it is worth noting that the Constituent Assembly specifically rejected a proposal to prescribe minimum educational qualifications (still remains so) for voters to contest election to Parliament and state Assemblies.
While KT Shah and Brajeshwar Prasad led the group seeking minimum educational qualifications for the MPs and MLAs, the majority supported the views of those with rights-based approach and decided against distinguishing between people on the ground of education.
Cautioning against tampering with the right of people in a democracy, Phool Singh representing United Provinces said: "Self-government means a government by the people, and if the people are illiterate, a few leaders have no right to usurp all the power to themselves."
Singh’s statement made in the Constituent Assembly while the matter was being debated in August 1949 sounds relevant even today.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)