The Rajasthan High Court will on Thursday pronounce its verdict on a controversial government order that has set educational norms for contesting village panchayat polls.
The Rajasthan government had recently issued an ordinance or executive order that requires those contesting panchayat elections to have studied till Class 8 in school. The ordinance also requires another two years of education for a member of a panchayat samiti, which governs a group of villages.
The qualifications, which were announced just six days before the Panchayat election dates were declared, will rule out half of rural Rajasthan from holding office.
In Rajasthan, women’s literacy, especially in rural areas, is just about 45 percent.
Many women sarpanches or village heads have challenged the state government’s controversial ordinance for contesting panchayat polls. Many see this as detrimental to their desire to re-contest village panchayat polls.
Those opposed to the ordinance claim that if the law had been introduced last year, more than 75 percent of the current panchayat samiti members would have been disqualified or ineligible for office.
However, Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Minister Gulab Chand Katariya has defended the decision.
Speaking to TV news channels, the minister had claimed that each panchayat gets a crore to spend every year, and the government wants those handling the money to have basic education.
The process of electing nearly one lakh panchayats or village councils in Rajasthan is underway and the results will be announced in February. The executive order has to be cleared by the state legislature within six months of its next session, which starts in March.
National or state lawmakers are not bound by these educational requirements. In Rajasthan, of the 200 state legislators, there are 23 who have not cleared Class 10.
—PTI