BackHow minimum education rule will affect panchayat elections
The right to equality argument apart, the minimum education criteria is extremely exclusionary
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Rajasthan went ahead with it earlier this year and Haryana tried to follow suit last month, but the Supreme Court has stayed it for now. Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states passed legislation that sought to introduce minimum educational qualifications as one of the criteria for contesting panchayat (village council) elections—Class X for general category men, Class VIII for general category women and Class V for Dalits.
“What is wrong with prescribing for minimum educational criteria? This is a progressive step. Parliament should also take a lead from this," The Indian Express quoted Mukul Rohatgi, attorney general of India, who was representing the Haryana government, as saying in court.
The right to equality argument apart, the minimum education criteria is extremely exclusionary. While education data for Classes V and VIII is not available, Census 2011 data for Class X shows that this rule will include men from only 52% of the rural households in Haryana. Further, if this rule were to be extended to all of India, it would include men from only 34% of the 168 million rural households.
The Haryana picture
According to Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the step was taken to improve the quality of leadership and governance in Panchayati Raj institutions. “This amendment will enable elected representatives to be more accountable as they would no longer be able to cite illiteracy as an excuse," he was quoted as saying in ‘The Indian Express’. Census 2011 data shows that while the percentage of households with male matriculates across states is low, the percentage of households with at least one literate person—defined as being able to read and write, regardless of educational qualification—is fairly high.
The India picture
The high differential between percentage of households with male matriculates and at least one literate person, who can read and write, is seen in the case of other states also.
Source: Census 2011
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