Article 326 of the Constitution provides for universal adult suffrage, but does not specifically mention the right to vote.
The absence of a constitutional right to vote has consequences.
How courts determine the electoral system?
Supreme Court requested the government’s views on a PIL seeking to impose a lifetime ban on contesting elections for those sentenced to imprisonment for more than two years.
Currently, the ban extends to six years after the completion of a sentence.
The court has held that citizens are entitled to cast a ‘none of the above’ vote, that the concealment of criminal antecedents constitutes a corrupt practice under the law, and that electoral appeals to caste and religion are impermissible.
More recently, the court has attempted to gradually reshape the ballot.
They raise fundamental questions about the nature of our democracy.
What are the problems?
The court has increasingly used the regrettable, caste-based taxonomy of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ in its decisions.
e.g In 2013, it endorsed the decision of the Patna High Court observing that candidates with criminal records pollute the electoral process, affect the sanctity of elections and taint democracy.
The court’s language is symptomatic of its conception of its own role to ‘disinfect’ the electoral process.
Rights that are not explicitly set out in the Constitution, such as the right to privacy, have routinely been impliedly read into the text.
But the court has refused to categorically recognise the right to vote as an inalienable constitutional right.
This could mean that it is a privilege that can be taken away as easily as it is granted.
Participation in the electoral process is often seen as a gateway right, or a ‘right of rights’.
The absence of a constitutional right to vote makes it easier to impose wide restrictions on who can exercise that right, and the circumstances in which they may do so.
This can be seen in the court’s endorsement of the ban on the voting rights of prisoners.
Blanket prohibitions on voting are the surest way of alienating a political community.
The ban is draconian as it disregards the seriousness of their offences or the length of their sentences.
Moreover, prisoners awaiting trial are also denied this ‘privilege’.
The court’s move to change the rules of the game to match its own conception of the ideal electoral system is detrimental.
The right to vote and the right to contest elections are fundamental markers of citizenship in a constitutional democracy.
