The Haryana Assembly enacted the Haryana Panchyati Raj (Amendment) 2015 laying eligibility conditions including minimum educational qualifications, having a functional toilet and paying arrears of some services for contesting the PRI elections. The Supreme Court upheld the Amendment Act. It is not just coincidence that it is only the BJP-ruled Haryana and Rajasthan, which have imposed such eligibility conditions for their PRIs elections.

No doubt, the Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar government’s decision to fix eligibility criteria for contesting PRI elections was well intentioned. It has also some welcome features as fixing the minimum educational qualifications for contesting the elections has helped a large number of young and educated including a record number of women to occupy key positions in the grassroots level democratic bodies. These have also resulted in recovering considerable amounts of the unpaid dues like electricity bill arrears. The eligibility condition of having a functional toilet to contest Panchayat elections is also laudable. But these decisions also pose worrying questions.

For instance, does the minimum educational qualifications condition not violate the constitutional and democratic right of the people to vote and elect their representatives for the lower rung of democratic institutions? There are a large number of the rural poor, especially women and dalits, who did not have a chance at full, formal education. They have been deprived of political power by these conditions. The government has admitted that around 2,000 posts of panches, sarpanches and Zila Parishad members are lying vacant after the conclusion of the Panchayat elections. Pending an inquiry about the factors, it is obvious that those who wished to contest the election did not have the required minimum educational qualifications for contesting elections. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has said “We do not have to deprive the people who are already deprived and take away what is their privilege.”

The most important question is: Isn’t it the government’s responsibility to ensure that the children of the deprived sections of the society are provided education to make them eligible to exercise their fundamental right of voting and seek elections to democratic bodies? The situation acquires greater relevance in view of the reports of increasing dropouts of students from schools and falling pass percentages of government schools.

The eligibility condition of having a functional toilet at home is laudable. But have the poor and the deprived sections of the society the needed resources and facilities in their tiny living spaces for building functioning toilets? These are the questions, which the governments imposing eligibility criteria for contesting panchayat elections must satisfactorily answer.

The Supreme Court’s judgement upholding the decision of the two states to impose eligibility conditions for PRIs elections has disregarded the fundamental right and overlooked Haryana’s and Rajasthan’s riding roughshod over local democracy. This has prompted Amartya Sen to stress the need “for a Constitution bench to deliberate on the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Haryana government’s decision to make literacy an essential criterion to contest panchayat elections.”

Take the second issue of cases against the television actors including Kiku Sharda and Ali Asgar.

We are living in times when mimicking, laughter and satire are treated as a crime and persons having such artistic dispositions are jailed simply because a street group protests alleging that their “religious sentiments” have been hurt by such acts of the performers. While Sharda was arrested, a case was registered against him and Ali Asgar for committing the ‘crime’ of hurting the religious sentiments of a small extremist group of Hindutva followers in a television show by mimicking Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda’s controversial head who is facing court cases for allegedly committing serious crimes. The Haryana government was so anxious to arrest Asgar that its police rushed to Mumbai to arrest him but could not as he had secured anticipatory bail from the court.

It is shocking that the government curbs freedom of expression and registers cases against artists for entertaining the people to earn their livelihood. The Khattar government has performed this act of ‘bravery’ by arresting Kiku Sharda and registering a case against Ali Asgar, both television actors. The legal community is surprised at Sharda’s arrest when there is a provision in the law for asking an accused to appear before the police for questioning.

The Khattar government obviously has tried to pay back to the Dera chief for the support his followers had extended to the BJP, which contributed to the party’s winning the Assembly elections.

The entire episode shows that religion, an otherwise a matter of personal faith, has been made a tool for promoting political agendas and for gaining personal advantages. US President Barrack Obama has warned against rising religious intolerance. Though his remarks made in Washington on Wednesday were in the context of developments in his home country, these equally apply to what has been happening in India for the last 20 months.

Our religious diehards perhaps believe in Argentine poet and short-story writer Jorge Louis Borges saying “To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely”. (IPA Service)