Calling the right to vote inseparable from Indian citizenship, Justice Bhuyan linked the franchise to the country’s freedom struggle and the basic structure of the Constitution. A billionaire and a rickshaw-puller, he said, possess votes of equal value in a democracy.
BY PC Bureau
October 4: Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan has warned that any process that strips millions of Indians of their voting rights cannot be dismissed as a procedural lapse, calling it a direct assault on the constitutional order.
Speaking at the valedictory session of the 19th NALSAR–Justice B.R. Sawhney Memorial Moot Court Competition in Hyderabad on Sunday, Justice Bhuyan said no amount of whataboutery could justify a process that creates citizens without voting rights.
“If any process results in disenfranchising millions and millions of Indian citizens, making them second-class citizens in their own country in the sense of being citizens without voting rights, such a process is intrinsically arbitrary,” he said. “No amount of whataboutery can justify it. It strikes at the very heart of the Constitution, and I would go to the extent of saying that it is a negation of the constitutional order which we have adopted under the Constitution of India.”
The Constitution, he said, recognised only one class of citizens.
“Indian Constitution does not provide for two classes of citizens: citizens with voting rights and citizens without voting rights. Any process which leads to wholesale disenfranchisement of Indian citizens making them citizens without voting rights would be violative of Articles 326 and 14.”
Justice Bhuyan said the constitutional restriction applied to every institution.
“No authority can do it; no court can condone it. No one is above the Constitution,” he said.
On electoral rolls, he said a voter’s name, once included, could not be removed without notice and an opportunity to be heard, except in cases such as the voter’s death.
“From the persona of an Indian citizen, the right to vote or right to be included in the voters list cannot be detached. It will be like taking out the soul from the body,” he said.
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While the Supreme Court has held that the right to vote is a constitutional rather than a fundamental right, Justice Bhuyan said he viewed the citizen’s right to vote as central to the Constitution’s basic structure.
He also linked the franchise to India’s struggle for independence.
“Indian citizens’ right to vote is intertwined with India’s long years of struggle against foreign rule. It is a manifestation of our freedom achieved after so much of struggle and sacrifice. Article 326 cannot be tinkered with at all,” he said.
Justice Bhuyan said the ballot represented equality in its most direct form: a billionaire and a rickshaw-puller each have a vote of equal value.
Invoking Justice Felix Frankfurter’s observation that the highest office in a democracy is that of the citizen, he posed a question: what is that office worth “without her voting right.”
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