According to Ramesh, both B.R. Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram strongly favoured making voting a fundamental right.
However, leaders such as Patel and C. Rajagopalachari expressed concerns that such a move could discourage princely states from joining the Indian Union at a sensitive stage of nation-building.
Instead, the Constitution ultimately enshrined universal adult franchise through Article 326.
“Sardar Patel himself took the position that universal adult franchise was, in itself, an implicit fundamental right,” Ramesh noted.
A long-running constitutional debate
The Congress leader said legal scholars and courts have spent decades debating whether the right to vote is merely a statutory right derived from the Representation of the People Act, 1951, or whether it possesses a broader constitutional character.
He pointed to a dissenting opinion by justice Ajay Rastogi in the 2023 Anoop Baranwal vs Union of India case, where the judge argued that voting should be treated as a fundamental right.
Ramesh further noted that the Supreme Court has already recognised several rights linked to voting as fundamental in nature.
The court has upheld citizens’ right to know the criminal records and financial interests of candidates, protected the secrecy of the ballot and recognised the option 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 argued.
Linking the demand to electoral reforms
The Congress sees the move as a safeguard against what it alleges are growing attempts to manipulate electoral rolls and disenfranchise voters.
Ramesh specifically referred to concerns over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, claiming that large numbers of voters in some states have faced arbitrary exclusions.
“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,” he said.
He added that recognising voting as a fundamental right would also lead to greater judicial oversight of the Election Commission’s functioning.
Triggered by a Supreme Court verdict
The renewed demand follows a recent Supreme Court ruling that declared a citizen’s right to walk on a demarcated footpath a fundamental right.
A bench of justices P.S. Narasimha and A.S. Chandurkar held that pedestrians’ rights form part of the freedom of movement guaranteed under Article 19(1)(d) and are closely linked to the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21.
The judgment prompted Ramesh to publicly ask whether the right to vote โ arguably the most essential democratic right โ should also receive similar constitutional protection.
“How about declaring the right to vote also a fundamental right?” he had remarked after the verdict, describing it as crucial to preventing what he called the current “death spiral” of Indian democracy.
The Congress’s latest intervention is likely to revive a long-standing constitutional debate over whether voting should remain a statutory entitlement or be elevated to one of the most protected rights under the Indian Constitution.
With PTI inputs
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