Haryana sticks to education bar, Supreme Court puts off panchayat poll

NEW DELHI: The Haryana government on Tuesday refused to drop the minimum educational qualification criteria for those seeking to contest panchayat elections in the state, prompting the Supreme Court to direct deferment of the polls till it decides the Constitutional validity of the law.
A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and A M Sapre directed the state and the Election Commission to postpone the polls till it decides validity of the law mandating educational qualification -Class 10 for men, Class 8 for women and Class 5 pass for Dalits -for contesting panchayat polls.

Acting upon the the directive, the state put the elections on hold pending the apex court verdict in the case.The state election commission also told the SC that it could not go ahead with the election process on the basis of its September 8 notification and would require to is sue a fresh one as it agreed with the Haryana government that the issue should be decided by the apex court.

The bench had said that it would allow the election only if the state government agreed to drop mandatory education qualification, but attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state, informed the court that it was not possible and appropriate to drop the provision. He said the state was ready to argue the case and the court should decide it one way or the other.

The top court on Monday expressed concern over the state government's move, saying that it had "serious doubt" over the Constitution al validity of such laws.

Three women from Haryana have moved the SC questioning the validity of the law mandating the educational threshold.

The women from Fatehabad, Hissar and Jhajjhar challenged the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act, 2015, saying that 83.06 per cent of rural women above 20 years of age in the state would be disqualified from contesting panchayat polls as they did not possess the requisite educational qualification. "Almost 67 per cent of women in urban areas will also be disqualified," they said.

The bench posted the case for final hearing on October 7.