The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a person, who has three children, is automatically disqualified from contesting Panchayat Polls. Not only that, such a person will also be disqualified from holding the post of a member or Sarpanch in a Panchayat.
Notably, a tribal Sarpanch in Odisha is reported to have given away one of his three children in adoption just because he wanted to show himself complying to the norms of the government according to which a sarpanch cannot stay in duty if he has more than two children. Reacting to this incident, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph said the legislative intent in Panchayati Raj Act was actually to bar any person having three 'live births' in her/his family from contesting panchayat elections or holding posts in panchayat.
The CJI-led bench said, "The legislative intent is to restrict the number of births in a family and not on the basis of benefit available under the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act in regulating the number of children by giving the excess children in adoption."
This decision of the Supreme Court came as a response to a petition filed by Minasingh Majhi, who was disqualified from holding the sarpanch's post in a panchayat in Nuapada district by an Orissa high court after the birth of his third child. It was to challenge the order of the high court that the Odisha sarpanch had filed a petition at the SC. Majhi was elected sarpanch in February 2002 but was later disqualified from the post due to the birth of the third child in August 2002.
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Responding to the pleas made by Majhi’s counsel Puneet Jain who argued that Majhi has given his first child on adoption and now has two children only, the bench said, "We do not know whether the law intended to make panchayat members and sarpanchs the role model for entire India by fastening the two-child norm on them. But the legislative intent appears clear that it wanted to put a cap on the number of children at two for those holding elected posts in panchayats.”
Jain further argued that what about the parents of twins and triplets who accidentally becomes the father of two or three and would he then be disqualified from contesting panchayat elections or holding elected post in the grassroots level democratic institution? In response to this argument, the bench said that the situation does not apply in every case and of course, there will be rare incidents. Birth of twins and triplets is a rare phenomenon and the court would take an appropriate decision as and when such a case occurs.