NEW DELHI: In response to a Public Interest Litigation challenging the validity of Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which denies inmates the right to vote, the Supreme Court gave notice to the Centre and the Election Commission (EC) on Monday.

Advocate Zoheb Hossain's arguments were taken into consideration by a bench led by Chief Justice U.U. Lalit and made up of Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Bela M. Trivedi, who also requested comments from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the election commission.

Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya, who was a student at the National Law University at the time, filed the lawsuit in 2019 to contest the constitutionality of section 62(5) of the Act.
The provision made in the plea was that the clause disenfranchises people based on the standard of prison confinement, and that this, along with the provision's overly liberal interpretation, leads to a number of atypical and shocking outcomes.
The plea read, "In addition to convicts who have been sentenced to a specific period of imprisonment, even under-trials, whose innocence or guilt has not been definitively established, are deprived of their right to vote, as they too are confined in prison, although they have not been sentenced to imprisonment."

The highest court set the subject for further hearing on December 29 after hearing arguments.
The argument made in the plea was that even individuals held in civil prisons are denied the ability to vote because of the provision's overly wide meaning. Therefore, it said, there is no justifiable classification based on the grounds for the detention.

"Due to the absence of any sort of logical classification based on the type of crime committed or the length of the sentence given, the contested clause functions as a blanket ban (unlike several other jurisdictions such as South Africa, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece, Canada etc ). This absence of classification violates Article 14's fundamental guarantee of equality "It was pleaded.

To ensure conformity with the Constitution, the plea asked that Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, be read down as it is ultra vires of the Constitution and violates both the constitutional right to vote under Article 326 and the fundamental right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution. The Election Commission of India was additionally instructed to take all necessary actions to implement the right of inmates to vote.

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