Rajasthan govt tables bill for disqualification of councillors for pre-poll violations

JAIPUR: The state government on Tuesday tabled two bills, the Rajasthan Municipalities Amendment Bill 2023, and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Governance and Social Sciences Bill 2023.
The municipalities amendment bill 2023, will give powers to the government to disqualify a councillor in case he did not possess the necessary qualification at the time of elections.Presently there is no provision for this except for filing an election petition.
Section 39 of the Rajasthan Municipalities Act, 2009 provides for the removal of members of a Municipality. Clause (c) of sub-section (1) of this section provides that a member can be removed if after his election he has incurred any of the disqualifications mentioned in section 14 or section 24 or has ceased to fulfil the requirement of section 21. The objective of the bill said there is no ground in the present law to remove a member who has concealed the fact of his possessing any of the disqualifications mentioned in section 14 or section 24 or did not fulfil the requirements of section 21 at the time of nomination. To remove such members from pre-election disqualifications, the only remedy available in the Act is filing an election petition under section 31 of the Act, that too within a period of one month. So, the government has decided to make a provision in Section 39 of the Act for the removal of such a member on the ground that he was disqualified under section 14 or section 24 or did not fulfil the requirement of section 21 on the date of the election.