New Delhi: There is a need for a Constitution bench to deliberate on the Supreme Court's upholding of the Haryana government's decision to make literacy an essential criterion to contest panchayat elections, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has said.

"We need to distinguish between what our objectives are and what is the state of the country... It does not mean that everybody should be literate and have a toilet in their homes and till that happens, we deny the people their privileges," Sen said here at a discussion on his latest book 'The Country of First Boys' late on Thursday.