[Answered] Restricted or selective franchise fundamentally disrupts electoral democracy. Critically analyze how such practices undermine universal adult suffrage, constitutional values, and create insecure citizens.

Introduction

India’s democratic fabric is rooted in universal adult franchise. However, emerging practices like Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision threaten to replace this principle with selective franchise, imperiling citizenship, equality, and participatory democracy.

Universal Adult Suffrage: A Constitutional Pillar

1. India adopted universal adult suffrage at the very birth of the Republic — a radical move unmatched even by older democracies like the UK and US at the time.
2. Enshrined in Article 326 of the Constitution, it guarantees voting rights to all citizens above 18, regardless of caste, class, education, property, or gender.
3. The Representation of the People Act, 1951, operationalised this inclusive vision, ensuring that the power to vote became the most fundamental means of political participation.

A Dangerous Precedent

1. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls launched in Bihar in June 2025 threatens to undermine this framework.
2. Unlike past roll revisions, the current SIR mandates submission of documentary proof — birth certificates, land records, matriculation certificates — excluding commonly held documents like Aadhaar, voter ID, or ration card. This disproportionately impacts rural populations, migrants, the landless, Dalits, and women.
3. With 50 million electors under scrutiny within a single monsoon month, including peak flood season and migration periods, the exclusion risks are massive.
4. The arbitrary document requirements bear striking resemblance to the NRC process in Assam, which excluded nearly 1.9 million people, sparking human rights concerns and international criticism.

Undermining Constitutional Values

1. Equality and Inclusion Violated: By creating eligibility hurdles, the state implicitly reverts to colonial-era logic — where education or property was a voting prerequisite. This directly violates Article 14 (equality before law) and the egalitarian ethos of the Constitution.
2. Burden Shifted to the Citizen: The foundational principle of natural justice — innocent until proven guilty — is flipped. Citizens must now prove their eligibility, effectively becoming “doubtful voters” in their own democracy.
3. Citizenship Without Franchise: The process risks producing a new class of disenfranchised citizens — people who retain formal citizenship but are stripped of voting rights. This echoes global cases of voter suppression through indirect disenfranchisement, such as literacy tests in pre-civil rights era USA.

Impact on Democratic Participation

The SIR, by institutionalizing document-driven disenfranchisement, may lead to:

1. Delegitimization of elections, with mass exclusions skewing electoral outcomes.
2. Alienation of vulnerable groups, especially migrants and minorities.
3. Loss of public trust in electoral institutions, already strained by controversies like electoral bonds and biased enforcement.
4. The Election Commission of India (ECI), once globally respected, risks becoming an instrument of exclusion rather than empowerment.

Way Forward

1. Ensure transparent, inclusive voter verification, using self-attested affidavits and commonly held IDs.
2. Implement migrant-sensitive reforms, such as remote voting (as explored by ECI in 2022).
3. Provide legal aid and grievance redressal mechanisms for excluded voters.
4. Strengthen the role of civil society and judiciary to oversee such exercises.
5. Reinforce voter registration as a facilitation process, not a punitive one.

Conclusion

India’s democratic soul rests on the promise of universal franchise. Moves towards selective enfranchisement erode citizenship,