Mumbai: Toilet, Ek Katha, does not just sound like the title of a Hindi film, but is the story of a candidate in Maharashtra. Not having a toilet in the house is no ground to reject nomination of a candidate contesting in the elections, ruled the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court recently.
The High Court was delivered the ruling while quashing the order of a returning officer who had rejected a woman’s nomination on the grounds that she did not have a toilet in her home. A bench of Justice Pukhraj Bora held that if a candidate does not have a toilet in his or her own house, but uses a public toilet, then such a person cannot be barred from contesting elections.
The bench was dealing with a plea filed by Sushila Naik, 42, challenging orders of the state election commission, which rejected her nomination on the grounds that she had no toilet in her house.“The objection raised only relates to the fact that Naik does not have a toilet in her house. It is not the case of Naik that she has a toilet in her house; instead, she has consistently maintained that she is using a public toilet,” Justice Bora noted.
“Not having a toilet in the house could not have been a ground for rejecting the nomination of Naik. In these circumstances, in fact, the said objection was not liable to be considered by the returning officer and should have been rejected at the threshold,” Justice Bora held.
Naik, a resident of Daul village, claimed that her entire village had been declared open defecation-free. On her nomination form, she had even affixed a certificate of the gram panchayat validating her claim that she used a public toilet. This is a procedure envisaged by law.
Referring to the law, Justice Bora observed, “The object of bringing this law was to deprecate defecation in open. The villagers were accordingly encouraged by introducing schemes for construction of toilets at their houses and public toilets were also constructed in the villages.”
“It is a matter of common knowledge that being incentivised by schemes of the government and after realising the true spirit behind such provisions in the law, villages, one after another, were declared to be free of open defecation,” Justice Bora added.
Justice Bora further said that unless any allegation is made against Naik that she is still defecating in the open, it has to be presumed that either she has a toilet in her house and is using it or that she regularly uses a public toilet. The judge, accordingly, quashed the orders of the returning officer
