Congress leader and Convenor of Panchayat Jan Adhikar Raksha Manch, Jot Singh Bisht has slammed the state government for incorporating impractical, faulty and incomplete amendments in the Panchayati Raj Act- 2016. Addressing media persons here on Friday, Bisht said that he has requested the governor of Uttarakhand to send the Panchayati Raj amendment bill back and if that does not happens, the Panchayat Jan Adhikar Manch would take the issue to the court. He said that in the recent Vidhan Sabha session, an amendment bill was presented in which changes in 23 sections of the Panchayati Raj act were made. “The Panchayat representatives are especially peeved at the changes made in the section 8 of the act in which an educational qualification of class X has been made compulsory for general category candidates and class VIII of candidates of SC and ST category. What is shocking that no educational qualification criterion is kept for candidates belonging of OBC category? In the Panchayat elections, 14 percent of posts are reserved for OBC and the total population of them is 20 percent in Uttarakhand. This population has been ignored in the amendment,’’ he said.
Questioning the two child criteria for Panchayat elections, the senior Congress leader said, “A person who has more than two children and is not even class VIII passed can become a member of parliament or member of legislative assembly but he or she cannot contest the Panchayat election.’’ Bisht said that before imposing the educational qualification criteria, the government should have conducted the survey of villages as in many villages it is difficult to find sufficient number of people who are eligible to contest these elections. He said that his organisation had sought time from the governor on the issue but as a time slot is yet to be allotted, a letter has been sent to her. Bisht claimed that the Jan Adhikar Manch has people from both the Congress and BJP and it is determined to fight for the maintaining the sanctity of 73rd constitution amendment.