NEW DELHI: Two former Chief Election Commissioners (CEC) on Monday joined various civil society activists in urging Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje to withdraw the Rajasthan Panchayati Raj (Second Amendment) Ordinance, 2014, that stipulates minimum educational qualifications for contesting local body elections.
Pointing out that there are no such mandatory qualifications to contest MP and MLA elections, the letter —signed among others by former CECs James Lyngdoh and S. Y. Quraishi — flags the fact that 23 BJP members of the State Legislature are below “10 th pass” in the State. Adding that 20 per cent of Union Cabinet Ministers are below “12 th pass’’, the signatories argued: “Surely if the Prime Minister finds MPs with such low educational qualifications suitable to devise and implement policies for the entire country, a sarpanch of a small gram panchayat need not be held to such arbitrary and exclusionary standards.”
According to the letter, the ordinance, “promulgated without any consultation or dialogue with political parties or civil society, will debar more than 80 per cent of Rajasthan’s rural populace from contesting elections and is discriminatory and unconstitutional.”
In their opinion, the ordinance which stipulates minimum education qualification of secondary education for Zila Parishad/Panchayat Samiti polls and Class VIII for Sarpanch elections will exclude more than 80 per cent of rural Rajasthan’s population from contesting; thereby defeating the very purpose of the 73 constitutional amendment in a state like Rajasthan with “abysmally low levels of literacy”.
Maintaining that only the elite will be able to contest elections — not those who are poor or marginalised — the letter adds that the State Government is also abridging citizens’ fundamental right to political participation and hence democracy.
