Right to vote should be a Fundamental Right: Jairam Ramesh

📌 Summary:

• Core development: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh argued that the right to vote should be recognised as a fundamental right to ensure the highest level of judicial review and protection, with safeguards against voter suppression and arbitrary exclusions (e.g., during a "Special Intensive Revision" (SIR) of electoral rolls)
• Context/trigger: He made the remarks citing the recent Supreme Court judgment that declared the right to walk on a footpath a fundamental right
• Core argument (the paradox): The judiciary has already recognised several related electoral rights — voters' right to know candidates' criminal records, financial interests and funding sources, protection of ballot secrecy, and NOTA — yet voting itself remains only a statutory right; "All related rights are fundamental, but not the core right they depend on"
• Significance: revives the constitutional debate on whether the right to vote should be elevated from a statutory right (under the Representation of the People Act) to a fundamental right

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 Polity — nature of the right to vote (constitutional vs statutory vs fundamental), electoral reforms, and judicial expansion of rights.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• The right to vote in India is currently a statutory right under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (linked to Article 326 on adult suffrage)
• The Supreme Court has upheld voters' right to know (candidate disclosures), ballot secrecy, and NOTA
• "Special Intensive Revision" (SIR) refers to an intensive revision of electoral rolls

🔑 Key Term: Statutory right vs Fundamental Right — a statutory right is created and protected by ordinary law (and can be altered by Parliament), whereas a fundamental right is guaranteed by the Constitution and enforceable through Articles 32/226.