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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Bar set too high, 70% out of Rajasthan, Haryana rural polls -Atul Thakur

Bar set too high, 70% out of Rajasthan, Haryana rural polls -Atul Thakur

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published Published on Sep 10, 2015   modified Modified on Sep 10, 2015
-The Times of India

With the introduction of a minimum educational qualification to contest panchayat elections, an overwhelming majority of the rural population in Haryana and Rajasthan rural population has been effectively barred from contesting.

In Haryana the minimum qualification is matriculation for unreserved seats while it is class eighth for seats reserved for women and scheduled caste candidates.

Census 2011 data shows that only 16% of the rural population aged 20 or more have qualifications above the cut-off level. (The minimum age for contesting panchayat elections is 21 years).

It also shows that 69.9% of the rural population in this age group is educated upto class eighth or less, making it clearly ineligible to contest from unreserved seats. In short, somewhere between 70% and 84% of the population will not be able to contest from general seats.

The data shows that 71.7% of women in rural Haryana aged 20 or more have no more than primary education. So they obviously can't contest even reserved seats.

Only 19% have studied beyond class eighth and are clearly eligible for reserved seats.

Among the state's SC population, 72.1% have not studied beyond primary school and hence are ineligible to contest even for reserved seats.

In Rajasthan, the state which just witnessed panchayat polls, the story is no different. The state has fixed class eighth as the minimum educational qualification to contest for sarpanch for unreserved seats and class five for reserved seats. Census data shows that 74.9% of the state's rural population in the relevant age group has not studied beyond primary schools. Only 14.2% have studied beyond middle school, the minimum benchmark to contest elections. Similarly the minimum qualification criteria will disqualify between 61 and 81% of the state's SC population and 72% to 83% of the ST population from seats reserved for them.

Women are the worst sufferers of these criteria because of lower literacy rates. Thus, in all social classes a much higher proportion of women are getting excluded by these laws. Similarly relatively older people, born much before schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan suffer more for something that is really a failure of the state.

The Times of India, 10 September, 2015, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bar-set-too-high-70-out-of-Rajasthan-Haryana-rural-polls/articleshow/48893464.cms


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