NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday decided to examine a petition challenging a provision in the election law that imposes a blanket ban on under trials, persons confined in civil prisons and convicts serving their sentence in jails from casting their votes.
The right to vote is a constitutional right under Article 326 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court bench of CJI UU Lalit, Justices SR Bhat and Bela Trivedi on Monday issued notice to the Central government in plea challenging Section 62(5) of Representation of People’s Act, 1951 which deprives prisoners of right
to vote.
The impugned provision bars person who is confined to a prison whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police to vote. In addition, the provision also bars persons who have been sentenced to a particular period of imprisonment.
The plea states that the provision is disproportionate, unreasonable, and discriminatory since the impugned provision uses confinement as the yardstick for disenfranchisement. “The impugned provision operates in the nature of a blanket ban, as it lacks any kind of reasonable classification based on the nature of the crime committed or the duration of the sentence imposed unlike several other jurisdictions such as South Africa, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, Canada,” the plea states.
Stressing on article 326 of the Constitution which considers right to vote as constitutional right, the plea says any curtailment of such a right must be based upon permissible restrictions found within the Constitution itself, and in the absence of any such restrictions, the curtailment in question is ultra vires the Constitution.
The latest National Crime Reports Bureau (NCRB) report of 2021 shows that a total of 5,54,034 prisoners were confined as on December 31, 2021 in various jails across the country. The number of convicts, undertrial inmates and detenues were reported as 1,22,852, 4,27,165 and 3,470, respectively, accounting for 22.2%, 77.1% and 0.6% respectively at the end of 2021.