Navigating the Electoral Process in Panchayati Raj Institutions

India’s Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) represent one of the world’s largest experiments in grassroots democracy, with over 3.2 million elected representatives spread across gram panchayats, block panchayats, and district panchayats. But making elections to these bodies happen – fairly, on time, and with genuine participation – is far more complex than it might appear. The machinery that drives PRI elections involves a dedicated constitutional authority, detailed eligibility criteria, contentious demographic policies, and the persistent challenge of reaching voters who may not even be home on polling day.

The constitutional foundation: State Election Commissions 🔗

Before 1992, elections to panchayats were left largely to state governments, which meant they were frequently delayed or manipulated for political convenience. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment changed this fundamentally by inserting Article 243K, which vests the “superintendence, direction and control” of all panchayat elections in a dedicated State Election Commission (SEC).

Each SEC is headed by a State Election Commissioner appointed by the Governor of the state. Crucially, the Commissioner cannot be removed except through the same process used to remove a High Court judge – a deliberate constitutional safeguard to insulate the position from political pressure. The Commissioner’s service conditions also cannot be altered to their disadvantage after appointment, ensuring genuine independence.

Unlike the Election Commission of India, which handles parliamentary and state assembly elections, SECs are responsible exclusively for local body elections – both rural (panchayats) and urban (municipalities). Every state has its own SEC, and each operates as an autonomous constitutional body. When the state government fails to provide adequate staff or resources, the SEC can formally request the Governor to direct compliance.

Managing electoral rolls for panchayat elections 🔗

One of the SEC’s primary responsibilities is ensuring that electoral rolls are accurate and complete before every election. However, most states do not maintain a separate voter list for panchayat elections. Instead, SECs use the electoral rolls prepared by the Election Commission of India under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and then divide them ward-wise to match panchayat boundaries.

This arrangement has practical implications. Since the SEC does not independently prepare or update voter lists, any errors or omissions in the ECI’s rolls carry over into panchayat elections. Some states – including Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Sikkim, and Uttarakhand – choose to prepare fresh electoral rolls independently, which avoids this dependency but duplicates effort and resources. The Indian Institute of Public Administration has recommended that a common electoral roll system be adopted to avoid confusion and wastage of public money, though this reform has not yet been implemented uniformly.

Alongside voter rolls, SECs are also responsible for delimitation – redrawing constituency boundaries before each general election to account for population changes. This process is often a source of delay, because it requires state government cooperation and can become entangled in legal disputes, particularly when OBC reservation quotas in panchayats are contested.

Candidate eligibility and the two-child norm 🔗

While the Constitution sets the broad framework, individual state legislatures define the specific eligibility criteria for panchayat candidates. Common disqualifications include being a government servant, having certain criminal convictions, or being a defaulter on cooperative society loans. But one eligibility condition has sparked particular controversy across India: the two-child norm.

Several states – including Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Assam – have enacted laws disqualifying anyone with more than two living children from contesting panchayat elections or holding office in PRIs. The policy is explicitly tied to population control objectives. Uttarakhand, for instance, went further by introducing educational qualifications alongside the two-child norm through a 2019 amendment.

Judicial validation: Javed v. State of Haryana (2003) 🔗

The constitutionality of the two-child norm was directly challenged before the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Javed v. State of Haryana (2003). Petitioners argued that Sections 175 and 177 of the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act, 1994 – which disqualified anyone with more than two children from contesting panchayat elections – violated their right to personal liberty under Article 21 and religious freedom under Article 25.

The Supreme Court, in a bench comprising Justices R.C. Lahoti, Ashok Bhan, and Arun Kumar, upheld the law. The Court applied the two-pronged test of reasonable classification: there was an intelligible differentia between those with up to two children and those with more, and this classification had a rational nexus to the objective of population control and family welfare. The Court also reasoned that the right to contest elections is a statutory right, not a fundamental right, and is therefore subject to legislative conditions. Fundamental rights, the Court said, must be read alongside the fundamental duties in Article 51A – including the duty to promote family planning.

The norm has continued to be tested in courts since then. In 2018, the Supreme Court clarified that even if a third child is given up for adoption, the disqualification still applies, since the law is concerned with the number of live births, not the number of children in one’s custody. More recently, in early 2026, the Orissa High Court upheld the disqualification of a gram panchayat member under the Odisha Grama Panchayats Act, 1964, reaffirming that elected representatives in PRIs must serve as role models for family planning.

Criticism and unresolved tensions 🔗

Despite judicial endorsement, the two-child norm is not without critics. Opponents argue that women in rural India often lack independent reproductive choices, meaning the norm effectively punishes them for decisions they had no power over. Critics also point out that the norm applies only to panchayat candidates in most states, not to legislators who contest assembly or parliamentary elections – creating an unequal standard for public representatives. The policy also does not apply uniformly across India; states like Kerala have pursued population stabilisation through education rather than disqualification, raising questions about whether coercive electoral norms are the most equitable tool for demographic policy.

Courts have drawn some limits. The Orissa High Court, for instance, ruled that twins born during a second pregnancy should not attract disqualification, since such births are not the result of a deliberate decision to exceed the two-child limit. This reflects a judicial attempt to distinguish between intentional non-compliance and biological circumstance.

The challenge of timely elections 🔗

The Constitution is clear: panchayat terms are five years, and fresh elections must be completed before a term expires. Article 243E does not allow for open-ended extensions. Yet, data from the CAG shows that more than 60% of urban local government elections have been delayed, and the situation in rural panchayats, while slightly better, is still troubled.

Reasons cited for delays include disputes over OBC reservations (which require empirical justification under the Supreme Court’s “triple test”), pending delimitation exercises, financial constraints, and outright political calculation. When elections are delayed, administrators appointed by the state government run panchayats – a situation that strips communities of elected accountability and concentrates power in bureaucratic hands.

The Supreme Court stepped in decisively in Kishan Singh Tomar v. Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad (2006), ruling that elections must be held within the five-year limit even if delimitation has not been updated or electoral rolls have not been revised. The Court directed that in such cases, old constituency boundaries and existing rolls should be used – but elections cannot be postponed. It also empowered SECs to approach High Courts, and if necessary the Supreme Court, when state governments fail to provide the necessary cooperation or resources.

High Courts across India have taken this mandate seriously. In early 2026, the Himachal Pradesh High Court directed the State Election Commission to hold panchayat elections by April 30, rejecting the state government’s argument that disaster-related disruptions justified further delay. The court held that constitutional obligations cannot be overridden by the Disaster Management Act once normalcy has returned. Maharashtra’s panchayat and municipal election delays drew similar judicial scrutiny, with the Supreme Court in 2025 directing completion of all local body polls by January 31, 2026.

Migration and the absent voter problem 🔗

Even when elections are held on time, a structural problem undermines genuine participation: a significant portion of rural voters is simply not present. India has one of the world’s largest internal migrant populations – seasonal workers, construction labourers, domestic workers – who leave their home villages for months at a time. Since voter registration is tied to a place of ordinary residence, migrants registered in their home village cannot vote elsewhere.

Returning to vote is often economically impossible. As International IDEA’s research on Indian migrants notes, travel costs to home constituencies are unaffordable for many seasonal workers, and changing registration every time they move is neither practical nor realistic given their informal living arrangements. The result is that the very communities most dependent on effective panchayat governance – landless labourers, migrant workers, economically marginal groups – are also the least able to participate in choosing their representatives.

The Election Commission of India commissioned a study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 2015 to assess the feasibility of absentee or e-voting for internal migrants, but the study concluded that the absence of a clear legal definition of “migrant worker” and reliable data on their numbers made implementation impractical at the time. No comprehensive solution has been implemented since. Some states have experimented with scheduling panchayat elections during agricultural off-seasons to improve turnout, but this is a partial remedy for a systemic problem.

The SEC’s independence under pressure 🔗

While SECs have constitutional autonomy, their functioning in practice is sometimes shaped by political dynamics. State governments control the timing of delimitation, the provision of funds and staff, and decisions around reservation schedules – all of which can be deployed to influence the timing or outcome of elections. The Supreme Court addressed this directly in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Vijay Kumar Mishra (2008), reaffirming that state governments cannot interfere with an SEC’s exercise of its constitutional functions, and that SECs have authority in their domain equivalent to the Election Commission of India.

In practice, the strength of any SEC depends on the political will of the state government to cooperate, and on the institutional confidence of the SEC itself to push back when that cooperation is withheld. The judiciary has consistently provided a backstop – but relying on court orders to conduct routine constitutional functions is itself a symptom of the institutional gap that still exists between the letter of the 73rd Amendment and its ground-level implementation.

What do you think? The two-child norm disqualifies candidates from panchayat elections in several states, but the same restriction does not apply to candidates for state assemblies or Parliament – does this double standard undermine the policy’s credibility as a genuine public health measure? And given that millions of India’s rural poor cannot afford to return home to vote in panchayat elections, should the right to vote at one’s current place of residence be treated as an electoral reform priority?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/panchayati-raj
2. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1331638/
3. https://mahasec.maharashtra.gov.in/Site/1376/Role-of-SEC?format=print
4. https://sec.punjab.gov.in/en/about-us/about-us/
5. https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s316026d60ff9b54410b3435b403afd226/uploads/2024/07/202407181366823679.pdf
6. https://sec.uk.gov.in/about-department/introduction/
7. https://lawbhoomi.com/javed-v-state-of-haryana/
8. https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/politics/sc-says-two-child-norm-applicable-in-panchayat-polls/story
9. https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2026/02/05/orissa-hc-upholds-two-child-norm-panchayat-disqualification/
10. https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SecuringReproductiveJusticeIndia-Chpt02.pdf
11. https://aklegal.in/eligibility-to-contest-elections-with-two-child-policy/
12. https://www.theindiaforum.in/politics/addressing-election-delays-local-governments
13. https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/3764700-high-court-mandates-timely-panchayat-elections-amid-state-delays
14. https://www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/html/absent-voters-india-challenges-and-prospects-enfranchisement-migrants