Centre for Law and Policy Research Consultant Mathew Idiculla writes on local government elections in Rajasthan for The Hindu. He discusses the minimum educational qualification criteria in Rajasthan’s local body polls.
The newly elected Rajasthan government recently decided to scrap the minimum educational qualification criteria for contesting local body polls. While the introduction of educational criteria and its judicial justifications have been critiqued earlier, I examine the underlying rationale behind these restrictions. I argue that such moves reveal that state governments and courts treat local governments more as administrative bodies rather than as representative institutions and further explore how this is often done by delaying local body elections.