Gujarat poll panel proposes: for local polls, need to be below 65 yrs and a graduate……Bashir Pathan
Gandhinagar: In the first such move anywhere in the country, the Gujarat State Election Commission (SEC) proposes to bar people above the age of 65 from contesting any local body election and not let any non-graduate run for the post of municipal councillor.
Suggesting that voting be made compulsory during elections to rural and urban local bodies across Gujarat, the SEC is recommending disqualification of any candidate who has an FIR against his or her name and has been charged this is a departure from the standard practice of declaring the convicted ineligible and the right of voters to recall representatives who do not perform.
These are among the many proposals in a draft prepared by the SEC based on feedback over two years from local bodies, elected representatives (MPs, MLAs, councillors and panchayat members), NGOs, district and block-level officials.
The draft proposal is almost ready and our officials are giving it the final touches. We will soon submit it to the government for approval, State Election Commissioner K C Kapoor told The Indian Express today.
If the recommendations go through, Gujarat will be the first state to overhaul the manner in which local self-government bodies, both in rural and urban areas, are constituted, Kapoor said.
One of the key proposals is fixing minimum education qualifications for candidates contesting local body elections. While clearing SSC will be must for contesting village panchayat elections, the minimum qualification for taluka/district panchayat or municipality polls will be Class XII-pass. Anyone running for the municipal corporation will have to be a graduate.
The right-to-recall is another suggestion in the draft proposal. During the statewide feedback exercise, a large number of people from all walks of life were of the view that if any elected member of a local body fails to live up to expectations, voters must be given the right to recall that member, said a senior SEC official.
The SEC is all for disqualifying any person against whom the police have filed an FIR in a criminal case and the court has framed charges. There is no need to wait for conviction of such a person. Under the proposal, if the local election authorities foresee the conviction of this person for more than six months, he or she will be disqualified from contesting local body elections, the official said.
The SEC, the official added, will recommend to the government to amend the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, the Gujarat Municipalities Act and the Panchayat Act to include these changes.