The Congress on Sunday called for the right to vote to be made a fundamental right, saying this would give it the highest level of judicial protection and strengthen safeguards against voter suppression and arbitrary disqualifications. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the move was needed after what he described as the Election Commission’s “blatantly partisan functioning” and because disqualifications had taken place in different states in “astronomical numbers” under the SIR, or special intensive revision, process.
Ramesh linked the demand to a recent Supreme Court ruling that declared the right to walk on a demarcated footpath a fundamental right. He said that if rights around voting had already received constitutional protection, it was anomalous that the right to vote itself still remained a statutory right.
Referring to the footpath ruling delivered on Friday by a bench of Justices P S Narasimha and A S Chandurkar, Ramesh noted that a two-judge bench of the top court had held that a citizen’s fundamental right to walk on a demarcated footpath is primary and has priority over motorised vehicles. The court said this right forms part of the freedom of movement under Article 19(1)(d) and other fundamental rights, including Article 21.
Ramesh said the question of making the right to vote a fundamental right had been debated since the Constituent Assembly period. He recalled that the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas, chaired by Sardar Patel, had discussed the issue at its meeting on April 21-22, 1947. According to Ramesh, Dr B R Ambedkar and Babu Jagjivan Ram argued strongly in favour of making voting a fundamental right, while Sardar Patel, C Rajagopalachari and others felt that doing so might make princely states reluctant to join the Indian Union and that universal adult franchise in the Constitution was sufficient.
He said, “Sardar Patel himself took the position that universal adult franchise was, in itself, an implicit fundamental right. This is the background to Article 326 which provides for elections based on universal adult suffrage.” Ramesh added that over the past seven decades, there had been a continuing debate on whether the right to vote is a statutory right under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, or an explicit fundamental right. He pointed to Justice Ajay Rastogi’s dissent in the March 2023 Anoop Baranwal vs Union of India judgement, in which the judge held that the right to vote is a fundamental right.
Ramesh said the Supreme Court had already recognised that voters have a constitutional and fundamental right to know the criminal antecedents of candidates, their financial interests and the sources of political funding. “It has protected ballot secrecy and recognized the right to reject all candidates through NOTA. It is, therefore, all the more anomalous that the right to vote remains only a statutory right. All surrounding rights have been declared fundamental but the core without which the former cannot exist still remains statutory,” he said.
He also said, “With the blatantly partisan functioning of the Election Commission of India working at the behest of the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister having been brutally exposed, it is now time to elevate the right to vote as a fundamental right that would offer it the highest level of judicial review and protection.” He added, “It would be a powerful step in putting in place safeguards against voter suppressions or arbitrary disqualifications that have taken place in different states in astronomical numbers under the SIR process. It would also mean greater Supreme Court vigilance over the functioning of the Election Commission.” On Friday, after the footpath verdict, Ramesh had also said the right to vote should be declared a fundamental right because it is of paramount importance to save Indian democracy from its present “death spiral”.
In sum, the Congress used the Supreme Court’s footpath ruling to renew its demand that voting be treated as a fundamental right, with Ramesh arguing that the change would settle a long-running constitutional debate and provide stronger protection against alleged voter suppression and disqualification.
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