The Supreme Court of India has sent notices to the Centre and the Election Commission of India (ECI) after a public interest litigation asked the court to grant voting rights to undertrial prisoners.
The bench, led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, demanded an immediate response to the petition.
Sunita Sharma filed the PIL through lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who said the case concerns about 5 lakh undertrial prisoners. The petition urges the court to issue guidelines for setting up polling stations inside prisons and to allow postal ballots for inmates who live outside their home constituencies or states. It also seeks to exclude from the ban those held for corrupt‑practice or election‑related offences.
Under Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, every prisoner is barred from voting, whether convicted or not. The petition argues that this blanket prohibition should be replaced by a more nuanced rule. Bhushan wants the court to limit disqualification to:
1. an individualized judicial determination,
2. final conviction for a specified offence, or
3. a sentence that expressly includes disqualification.
The authors cite international practice, noting that most democracies and even India’s neighbour Pakistan allow pre‑trial and undertrial inmates to vote. They argue that the current rule violates the presumption of innocence, a principle upheld worldwide. In India, more than 75 % of prisoners are pre‑trial or undertrial—many of them remain jailed for years before their cases reach a verdict. According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2023 Prison Statistics, out of 530,333 inmates, 389,910 (73.5 %) are undertrial, down from 434,302 last year.
The court’s response will shape whether millions of inmates can exercise their fundamental democratic right this election season.
Source: aninews
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