370 seats of panch vacant for want of educated candidates

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 26

Haryana has not been able to find enough educated women to fill all seats of panch and sarpanch reserved for them in the past nine months.

Even after another attempt to fill the vacant seats through bypoll yesterday, 370 seats of panch and two sarpanch have been left vacant in the state due to education and other conditions introduced by the government.

The state government had incorporated educational criterion of matriculation for the general candidate, middle for women and SCs and fifth standard for SC women by bringing the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act, 2015.

The amendment also made no dues from banks and power utilities and toilets at home mandatory for the candidates.

Owing to these conditions, 2,118 seats of panch and 14 of sarpanch remained vacant after elections to the Panchayati Raj Institutions held in January this year.

A perusal of the list showed that almost 95 per cent of the vacant seats were reserved for women, either from the general category or from the Scheduled Castes.

When the State Election Commission ordered bypoll on these seats on September 25, 1,480 panches and four sarpanches were elected unanimously since a single nomination each came on all these seats.

Elections were held for 268 seats of panch, while 370 seats still remained vacant as no candidate filed nomination papers against these seats in the bypoll held yesterday.

Educationally backward Mewat has the maximum 100 vacancies left, followed by Jind 42, Palwal 41, Yamunanagar 26 and Panchkula 24.

Jagmati Sangwan, general secretary of the All-India Democratic Women Association (AIDWA), who had challenged the amendments to the Panchayati Raj Act introducing educational and other conditions in the court, alleged that it had been proved that the BJP government’s decision was not based on ground reality.

“Such a large number of seats reserved for women have been left vacant even after second attempt. Many of those filled have elected women who have little idea about the village since they had married in the village less than a month before their respective elections,” she alleged.

State Election Commissioner Dr Dalip Singh, however, said that introduction of educational and other conditions had brought qualitative improvement in the panchayats and brought educated youth in the system.

“Other states have also shown interests in these conditions and I have been invited to deliver a lecture on benefits of this in a three-day meeting of the All-India State Election Commissions starting from October 4 at Hyderabad,” he added.