Khap Panchayats: The Socio-Legal Abyss

Political Science

Khap Panchayat is a strong traditional institution which is basically betrothed in a process of dispute resolution and reconciliation among the villagers and communities. But some potent and powerful persons, with coerced public consensus and without any election, acclaim themselves to be the rulers and assume the responsibility of settling disputes between individuals and villages. The Khap Panchayats thus become undemocratic and without application of law they impose self-created norms in the name of preserving morals and values in the society. The government and the honourable Supreme Court of India have taken a very stern view against the dictatorial and authoritarian decisions of the Khap Panchayats. The present paper reviews such actions in detail and also tries to give the ways bywhich these obnoxious Khap Panchayats can be made to perform more constructive works for the betterment of the society as they had done in the past.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.