However, why did the Home Minister Amit Shah react by calling it a no-ball. What kind of yorker did Kejriwal throw? In his speech, Kejriwal only recalled the BJP’s intra-party rule, made at the BJP national convention a few years ago, which called for leaders past the age of seventy-five not to contest elections and to retire from active politics. According to this rule, Narendra Modi will have to retire from politics in 2025 and if the government is of BJP, Amit Shah will be the Prime Minister, so seeking votes for Modi is a fraud, alleged Kejriwal. But immediately, Amit Shah defended that there is no such rule in the BJP party organisation and that Modi will remain as the Prime Minister and claimed that Kejriwal is misleading the people.
Immediately after that, a video of Amit Shah himself, from the year 2015, went viral on social media in which he saluted the life work of RSS leader Nanaji Deshmukh at an event and said that political leaders who have crossed the age of 60 need to retire from active party politics. Furthermore, there are many examples of this rule made by the BJP within the party, citing news items published from time to time to which many political parties strongly reacted. Now this issue will remain in discussion for some time, and political accusations will continue to be made.
Let’s keep Kejriwal’s allegations and Shah’s explanation aside for a while. The question here is, is it necessary for political leaders to retire from active politics after reaching the age of seventy or seventy-five? Experts have expressed varied views on this issue. In a survey conducted by some private institutions, youth have expressed the opinion that political leaders should retire as soon as they turn sixty. They pointed out that if the retirement age of central government employees is 60, then why not apply the same rule to politicians? Such questions have been asked by the youth, but there is also a difference of opinion regarding this.
One of the main reasons for keeping the government retirement age at 60 is to control unemployment by creating job opportunities for new candidates. But politics is not a government job which requires one to work from 10 am to 5 pm; it is a duty that involves continuous service to the people. However, elderly political leaders who are not even able to walk are justifying the holding of important party posts. For this, a label of ‘experience and maturity’ is also applied to such leaders. In every party there are elderly, and incapacitated leaders, holding important posts or still contesting elections, when they should in fact long retired from active politics. It is definitely not a good idea to leave the governance of a country which belongs to the youth in the hands of people who have crossed seventy or seventy-five years of age.
This situation is not only in India. Even in a developed nation like America, the topic of aging leaders is being openly discussed. Joe Biden, the leading contender for the 2024 US presidential election, turned 81 in 2023, and Donald Trump is 77 years old, which is ten years above the normal retirement age in the United States. Biden’s advanced age as President came under fire in February when US special counsel Robert Haar described him as “an old man with a failing memory” in his report on the year-long investigation into the handling of Biden’s files. However, the White House described the report as ‘inaccurate’. Another Republican leader, Chuck Grassley, is the oldest senator in America at the age of 90; while another senator, Bernie Sanders, is 82. According to J Muralitharan, who works at the Center for Development Studies, age should not be an issue if a person is medically and physically fit. But, there is a difference of opinion on this point as well.
Basically, the performance of a person depends one’s the physical ability. In fact, more than that, it depends on one’s mental ability. According to researchers, in healthy people, a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex is affected by aging. This study points out that five percent of human memory is lost every ten years; after the age of 30, a person’s performance gradually declines, and as the person reaches the age of 70 these effects become more and more clear. As a person ages, the efficiency of the white cells in the brain decreases. That is why the retirement age of government employees in India has been set between 58 and 60. Of course, in some States like Andhra Pradesh, the age of a State government employee is 62.
The point is that political leaders must retire at a certain age and give a chance to the youth. The experience of veterans and the dynamism of youth should be used effectively. But this is not reflected while allocating election tickets. Many aged leaders are tempted to hold on to the chair, the power and the wealth. There is also an idea that certain seats should be reserved for young men and women aged 30-45, while political parties distribute tickets. These political reforms are not impossible in the world’s largest democratic nation like India.