Ex-CEC Quraishi bats for making right to vote a fundamental right

New Delhi: Mounting a case for making the right to vote a fundamental right, former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi questioned if the right to not vote -- as exercised with NOTA -- can be a fundamental right, why the right to vote shouldn't be.

Quraishi made the remarks to PTI Videos ahead of the launch of his new book 'India and I: A Hundred Memories, Not a Memoir'. The book, published by Hachette India, throws light on 100 episodes from Quraishi's life.

Asked about Congress MP Jairam Ramesh's pitch last month that the right to vote be made a fundamental right, Quraishi said on Tuesday, "Yes, indeed. Because this is strange that many times over all these decades, this has gone up to the Supreme Court, and they have always held that this is a statutory right created by an act of Parliament and not given in the Constitution. But in 2013, when the famous NOTA judgment was pronounced, then it was a constitution bench, and they stated that your right 'not to vote' is a constitutional right and a fundamental right because it is a part of freedom of expression under Article 19.


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"So, if the right to not vote can be a fundamental right, how can the right to vote not be a fundamental right? And I think there was one judgment which also asserted the same point," he said.

The Supreme Court is moving in that direction to declare it as a constitutional right, the former chief election commissioner (CEC) said.

The Congress last month argued the case for making the right to vote a fundamental right, saying it would be a powerful step for putting in place safeguards against voter suppression or arbitrary disqualifications that have taken place in different states in "astronomical numbers" under the SIR process.

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Congress general secretary Ramesh said earlier that with the "blatantly partisan functioning" of the Election Commission of India "working at the behest" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah 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.

Ramesh pointed out that the Constituent Assembly set up an Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas under the Chairmanship of Sardar Patel. In its meeting held on April 21-22, 1947, there was an animated discussion on making the right to vote a fundamental right, with B R Ambedkar and Babu Jagjivan Ram arguing strongly in its favour, he said.

Sardar Patel, C Rajagopalachari and some others took the position that if the right to vote was made a fundamental right, the princely states may be reluctant to join the Indian Union and that it is enough to provide for universal adult franchise in the Constitution, Ramesh 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," he had said.

Over the past seven decades, there has been a continuing debate on whether the right to vote is a statutory right provided by the Representation of People Act, 1951 or is an explicit fundamental right, he said.

"Different views have been expressed. Most recently, Justice Ajay Rastogi, in a dissenting opinion in the Anoop Baranwal vs Union of India judgement of March 2023, held that the right to vote is a fundamental right," Ramesh pointed out.

The Supreme Court has itself recognised that voters have a constitutional and fundamental right to know the criminal antecedents of candidates, their financial interests and sources of political funding, he said.

"It has protected ballot secrecy and recognised 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," Ramesh argued.