New Delhi, Oct 25: The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that birth of a third child would automatically disqualify a person from contesting panchayat polls and from holding the post of a member or sarpanch in a panchayat.
Scotching attempts by a tribal sarpanch in Odisha to step around the disqualification law by giving away one of his three children in adoption to comply with the two-child norm, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph said the legislative intent in Panchayati Raj Act was to bar any person having three 'live births' in her/his family from contesting panchayat elections or holding posts in panchayats.
"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," the CJI-led bench said.
The petitioner, Minasingh Majhi, had challenged an Orissa high court decision to disqualify him from holding the sarpanch's post in a panchayat in Nuapada district after the birth of his third child. Two children were born to him and his wife in 1995 and 1998. He was elected sarpanch in February 2002, but the birth of the third child in August 2002 led to his disqualification from the post.
His counsel Puneet Jain argued that he had given the first born in adoption in September 1999 and as Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act provides that once a child is given in adoption, that child ceases to be a member of the original family, his client remained compliant with the two-child norm to hold the post of sarpanch.
Jain argued that though Majhi was the biological father of three children, legally he had two children as the first born was given away in adoption to another family and, hence, he was compliant with the norm set by the Odisha Gram Panchayat Raj Act.
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 argued that twins and triplets were born to persons and asked whether they should be disqualified from contesting panchayat elections or holding elected posts in the grassroots level democratic institution? The bench said the situation did not apply to the case in hand and clarified that birth of twins and triplets was a rare phenomenon and the court would take an appropriate decision when such a case was brought before it.
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