Draconian effects of removing minimum education qualification to contest local elections.

Rajasthan assembly recently passed two bills which aim to delete certain provisions of the Rajasthan Municipalities Act 2009 and Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Act 1994 so as to end the minimum education qualification to contest local body election in the state. In the assembly, during the debate, it was insisted by the government that the object of the amendment is to eliminate the unreasonable restrictions of the voters to contest the election at the grassroots level which. Therefore it is proposed that the restriction of educational qualification for contesting election for the office of sarpanch or a member of Zila Parishad or Panchayat Samiti be removed. The above said bills when comes into force will delete clause (f) of section 21 of the Rajasthan Municipalities Act 2009 which specifically mentions that to contest the municipal elections one should have passed secondary examination and clause (r), (s), (t) of section 19 of the Rajasthan Panchayti Raj Act 1994 wherein minimum education qualifications are mentioned for a person who wants to contest an election or wants to be a member of such panchayati raj institutions.

Those in support of this bill generally argues that this will remove the unreasonable and arbitrary restrictions on their right under article 14 of the constitution of India. Laying minimum education qualification to contest local elections create artificial classification among voters and that there is no reasonable nexus between these restrictions and objective of the law. They also feel that people generally are uneducated not because of choice but because of poverty or they have little or no access to the schools thus because of these type of restrictions majority of people will be devoid of their right to contest the elections.

However, people generally in support of the bill failed to see the positive impact of such kind of progressive restrictions i.e. minimum education qualification. If such kind of progressive restrictions is removed then it will have long term impact on various state policies. It can be said that by removing such restrictions state is trying to evade from its obligations under Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education 2009. Section 8 of the abovementioned Act states that the government is under an obligation to provide free and compulsory elementary (up to 8^th class) education to every child. However, by these bills, the government is encouraging a person who has not passed class 5 to contest local elections whereas state is under an obligation to provide elementary education to that person. Government through its policies should encourage usage of education among its citizen, however, these bills are entirely contrary to the government objectives.   

 The objective and the reason behind restriction on education qualification is to ensure that those who seek to contest local elections should have some basic education which enables them to effectively discharge their duties. Apex Court in various cases has held that education is important for a healthy society and plays an essential role in the development and progress of a country.

The Apex Court in the case of Rajbala vs State of Haryana while discussing the importance of education has observed that it is only the education which gives a human being the power to discriminate between right and wrong, good and bad. The Hon’ble Court also highlighted the fact which surprisingly completely nullifies the objective of the present bills, the court laid emphasis on the fact that every person who is entitled to vote is not automatically eligible to contest for every office under the constitution. At last, if a person does not have requisite knowledge to discharge the function of the office then he should not contest the elections for the said office.