Skip to main content

Judgment on disqualifying panchayat candidates to "disenfanchise" 50% Haryana women, is "anti-UN convention"

 
The Supreme Court judgment of December 10, which upholds amendment to Haryana's Panchayati Raj law seeking to disqualify those contesting panchayat polls for not possessing minimum educational qualifications, non-payment of electricity bills or dues to cooperative banks, and not having a toilet in their homes is being widely interpreted as anti-women, anti-Dalit, and against international laws, to which India is a signatory.
While 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”, senior activist Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative believes, “It ignores important international human rights standards that India has accepted and agreed.”
Adds Indira Jaising, senior Supreme Court advocate, the judgment “effectively disenfranchises” 68 per cent of Dalit women, 41 per cent of Dalit men, and over 50 per cent of all women in Haryana from contesting a panchayat election, wondering what would happen to other BJP-ruled states, including Rajasthan, who have made “similar restrictions.”
Especially referring to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 (ICCPR), to which India is a signatory (1979), Nayak says, it “prohibits discrimination between human beings in relation to voting or contesting elections”, adding, it insists for voting rights to all individuals “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
In an email alert (click HERE), Nayak says, Apex Court judgment has “nothing to show that this important commitment that India has made before the international community was raised by the petitioners”, adding, “It is strange that the Apex Court, which is often sensitive to India's international human rights commitments, did not go the extra mile to check whether their judgment would be tenable in the light of those international commitments.”
Nayak insists that there is a need to bring this judgment, as also the law amending the Haryana Panachayati raj Act, before the notice of the international agencies such as the UN Human Rights Council and the Human Rights Committee, as also the treaty monitoring body for the ICCPR, as “it violates a major human rights commitment it made internationally 36 years ago.”
Pointing towards the fact that the judgment highlights an “irony” Nayak says, “If you are a woman who is only a sixth class pass, you cannot contest elections in Haryana in the non-reserved category but you can successfully contest elections to Parliament from anywhere in India and become the Union Cabinet Minister for Water Resources and work to rejuvenate river Ganges.”
Nayak wonders, “What if some villages do not have any candidate who meets the necessary educational qualification? Will the panchayat remain without an elected body?” He asks, “Can formal education alone be the benchmark for testing the intelligence of people? Can only formally educated people discriminate between good and bad and right and wrong as the judge held?”
Equating "rural indebtedness" with "insolvency", the activist asks, “So many thousands of candidates, many of whom have successfully been elected to Parliament and State Legislatures in Haryana and elsewhere have declared unpaid Bills and loans in their election affidavits, which are publicly available on website of the Election Commission of India. Should they not be prohibited from contesting elections using the Apex Court's reasoning?”
Thus, one Lok Sabha MP from Vijayawada has declared liabilities to the tune of Rs 710 million; three MPs from Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra have outstanding dues of more than Rs 400 million each; and 17.5 per cent of MPs (95) in the Lok Sabha have declared dues of more than Rs 10 crore each, Nayak says.
Nayak also wonders how can people be blamed for not having toilets when the Governments have done precious little to curb corruption in the Total Sanitation Campaign which is nowadays subsumed into the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign), commenting, “Thanks to this judgment, the very poor, unlettered, the indebted and the underprivileged are being ‘cleaned out’ of the political scene in Haryana.”

Comments

TRENDING

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Behind the scene? Ex-IAS, now Modi man in Yogi Cabinet, who lined up Mahakumbh VVIP comforts for Gujarat colleagues

The other day, I was talking to a senior IAS official about whether he or his colleagues had traveled to the recently concluded Mahakumbh in Allahabad, which was renamed Prayagraj by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as part of his intense Hindutva drive. He refused to reveal any names but said he had not gone there "despite arrangements for Gujarat cadre IAS officials" at the Mahakumbh VVIP site. "The water is too dirty—why take the risk?" he asked.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.