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| No toilet at home? Then you can't contest elections, says SC | | | Early Times Report
new delhi, Dec 12: The Supreme Court has issued a significant order wherein persons not having a proper toilet facilities or educational qualification won't be eligible to contest the panchayat elections.
In addition to it the contesting candidate is supposed to ensure that he or she has no outstanding balance towards monthly electricity fees or being a defaulter of some banking agency.
The judgement was passed by the apex court after the Haryana Government's order was challenged. The Government of Haryana had initially set these benchmarks for contesting candidates and the same were challenged before judiciary. The apex court has upheld the decision of Government of Haryana.
Details available with Early Times revealed that on December 10 the Supreme Court pronounced its judgement on a challenge to a set of recent amendments to the law relating to Panchayati Raj institutions in the State of Haryana. In the matter of Rajbala and others V/S State of Haryana . In the Writ Petition (Civil) 671/2015 the Apex Court has held that the action of the State Legislature of Haryana of introducing three grounds for disqualifying voters from contesting elections to the Panchayats at all 3 levels (village, taluka/tehsil and district) on the grounds of a) not possessing minimum educational qualifications b) non-payment of electricity Bills or dues to cooperative banks; and c) not having a toilet in their homes.
The apex court has held that these disqualifications do not violate the right to equality guaranteed by Article 14 of the Constitution and they are not unreasonable or arbitrary. One of the judges on the Bench which delivered the judgement in a separate concurring opinion said that these disqualifications have a reasonable nexus with the objectives sought to be achieved by making the changes in the law and that such disqualifications must be applicable across the country and not only in the State of Haryana.
The petitioners described as 'political activists' by the apex court, recently challenged the constitutionality of an amendment made by the Haryana State Legislature in the Panchayati Raj Act (PR Act). Earlier this year the State Government of Haryana secured legislative approval for a set of new grounds on which voters in Haryana will be disqualified from contesting elections to the offices of the Sarpanch (elected village headman) and Panchs (other elected members of the Panchayat) at all three levels of the Panchayati Raj structure.
The petitioners challenged three of these disqualifications listed above on the following grounds: that they violated Article 14 of the Indian Constitution which guarantees the right to equality of every person before the law and equal treatment of the law; that the amendment was arbitrary in nature; that it would prevent more than 50% of the citizenry in Haryana from contesting elections to these rural local self-governing bodies and that the classification of voters based on their educational qualifications, debts owed to public service providers and cooperative banks is an unreasonable classification where the criteria were not defensible under the Constitution. |
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