Delhi high court poser to Election Commission and Centre on voting rights of prisoners

NEW DELHI: Can prisoners be allowed to vote? Delhi high court has sought the stand of the Centre, Election Commission and prison authorities in the capital on a plea seeking to grant and facilitate voting rights to all people lodged in jails across the country. Currently, once a citizen goes to jail, he loses voting rights except in the case of detenues, who form a separate class of inmates.
A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao asked the ministries of home and law and justice to respond to the petition filed by three law students challenging the constitutionality of section 62(5) of Representation of People Act, which deprives prisoners of their right to vote.

The students, Praveen Kumar Chaudhary, Atul Kumar Dubey and Prerna Singh from an Uttar Pradesh college, have argued that a blanket ban on right to vote of prisoners is a violation of the spirit and soul enshrined in the Constitution as well as the basic principle of equality.

The petition says that all people in any kind of confinement either in jails or police stations or at any other place shall be allowed to vote and requisite facilities for the same shall be made available.

In the plea, the students have contended that denial of voting rights has translated into ostracisation of the prisoners from the mainstream political decision making of the world’s largest democracy and urged the court to intervene.

The students maintain that people in any kind of confinement, either in jails or police stations or at any other place, should be allowed to vote and requisite facilities for the same should be made available. “The voting restriction imposed on the prisoners is contrary to freedom of expression, which is the live wire of democracy,” said the plea.