The Supreme Court has decided to investigate a poll law that denies civil detainees and those awaiting trial the right to vote.
According to a petition filed by a student at the National Law School of India University, while convicts on bail could vote, those awaiting trial whose innocence or guilt had not been conclusively determined, as well as those confined in civil persons, were denied the right to vote.
The Supreme Court decided on Monday to hear a petition challenging a provision in the election law that prohibits undertrials, people confined in civil prisons, and convicts serving their sentences in jails from voting.
A Bench led by India's Chief Justice U.U. Lalit served notice on the Union of India, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Election Commission of India on a petition filed by Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya, a student at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, who claimed that while convicts on bail could vote, those confined in civil persons and those awaiting trials were denied the right to vote.
Mr. Bhattacharya, who was represented by advocate Zoheb Hossain, contended that Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, states that "no person shall vote at any election if he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment, transportation, or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police."
Mr. Hossain contended that the provision arbitrarily disenfranchises a large segment of the country's population by using "excessively broad language."
According to the most recent National Crime Reports Bureau (NCRB) report for 2021, a total of 5,54,034 prisoners were confined in various jails across the country as of December 31, 2021. At the end of 2021, the number of convicts, undertrial inmates, and detenues was reported as 1,22,852, 4,27,165, and 3,470, accounting for 22.2%, 77.1%, and 0.6%, respectively. The number of people awaiting trial has risen from 3,71,848 in 2020 to 4,27,165 in 2021. A 14.9% increase. At the end of last year, Uttar Pradesh had the most undertrials (21.2%, 90,606 undertrials), followed by Bihar (13.9%, 59,577 undertrials) and Maharashtra (7.4%, 31,752 undertrials).
According to the petition, "denying penitentiary inmates the right to vote is more likely to send messages undermining respect for the law and democracy than messages enhancing those values... Denying the right to vote does not meet the criteria for legitimate punishment."
According to the report, the standard of confinement in a prison to disenfranchise people has several anomalous and shocking consequences. One of them is that a judgment-debtor (someone who has not paid his debt despite a court verdict) who has been arrested and detained in a civil person loses her right to vote. Detention in civil prisons differs from criminal imprisonment. Denying a person incarcerated in a civil prison the right to vote is clearly discriminatory.
In contrast to countries such as South Africa, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, Canada, and others, the ban lacks reasonable classification based on the nature of the crime or the length of the sentence imposed. "This lack of classification is incompatible with the fundamental right to equality guaranteed by Article 14 (right to equality)," according to the petition.
Mr. Bhattacharya emphasised once more that if a convicted person can vote while on bail, why is the same right denied to a person on trial who has not yet been found guilty of a crime by a court of law?
"It cannot be conceived how the provision, which deprives prisoners of their right to vote, has any nexus with decriminalisation of politics, which is concerned with the right to contest of candidates with criminal antecedents," the petition questioned the election law's logic.
Article 326 of the Constitution states that the right to vote is a constitutional right.
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