Patna: You don’t have a toilet in your village home? You can’t contest Panchayat elections! Nobody will be able to contest elections under the three-tier panchayati raj system in Bihar if they do not have a toilet at home.

Bihar, has 1.63 crore families without access to toilets, according to the public health engineering department (PHED) statistics. They relieve themselves in fields, or along roads and railway tracks.

The Bihar government is using the upcoming panchayat elections in March-April 2016 to spearhead its campaign to put an end to open defecation. The campaign will cover 8,405 village panchayats comprising 43,314 villages, spread across 38 districts in the state.

The Bihar Panchayat Raj Act 2006 has been amended for this purpose, and a notification has been issued that says toilets will be mandatory for all contesting candidates at all levels from January 1, 2016.

The amendments were made following chief minister Nitish Kumar’s pledge do away with the harmful practice of open defecation.

Section 136 (1) of the act was amended to make toilets mandatory for contestants. If you want to contest panchayat elections after January 1, 2016, you will have to provide an affidavit while filing nominations, saying you have a functional toilet at home.

Today, a mere 15 per cent of elected representatives of the panchayati raj institutions have toilets at their houses, a government survey revealed.

PHED project management unit director Sadullah Jawaid, who is overseeing the campaign to stop open defecation under Swachh Bharat Mission and Lohia Swachhta Yojana in Bihar, expressed happiness over the initiative and said it will go a long way to promote use of toilets in the state.

“There are around 1.25 lakh positions in the panchayati raj institutions in Bihar and if five or six candidates contest for each of them on an average, it will ensure that six to seven lakh persons will have toilets in their houses. This will have a good effect on their families,” he said.

Sadullah also said the contestants led a public life and thus, would have the power to influence people in their area to construct toilets in their houses and stop defecating in the open. “The move will have a big impact on the state, and will go a long way in stopping defecation in the open,” he said.

The PHED department grants a sum of Rs 12,000 to BPL families and those just above the poverty line for toilets. Around 90 per cent families in the state come under these two categories while the rest are given Rs 4,600 as incentive.

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