HYDERABAD: Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Sunday said any process that disenfranchises millions of citizens is "intrinsically arbitrary" and amounts to a negation of the constitutional order, asserting that no amount of "whataboutery" could justify such an outcome.
Delivering the valedictory address at the 19th Nalsar-Justice B.R. Sawhney Memorial Moot Court Competition at Nalsar University of Law in Hyderabad,
Justice Bhuyan said the Constitution did not envisage two classes of citizens - those with voting rights and those without them.
"If any process results in disenfranchising millions and millions of Indian citizens, making them second-class citizens in their own country in the sense of being citizens without voting rights, such a process is intrinsically arbitrary," he said.
"No amount of whataboutery can justify it. It strikes at the very heart of the Constitution and I would go to the extent of saying that it is a negation of the constitutional order which we have adopted under the Constitution of India," he added. Justice Bhuyan said any process leading to wholesale disenfranchisement
would violate Articles 326 and 14 of the Constitution, adding, "I ask myself, what is the worth of a citizen without his/her voting rights."
"No authority can do it; no court can condone it. No one is above the Constitution," he said.
On deletion of names from electoral rolls, he said that except in the case of a deceased voter, the name of a person already included in the rolls could not be removed without notice and a hearing. "From the persona of an Indian citizen, the right to vote or right to be included in the voters list cannot be detached. It will be like taking out the soul from the body," he said.
Justice Bhuyan also said the right to vote was central to the Constitution's basic structure. While the Supreme Court had in several judgments held that voting was not a fundamental right, it had recognised it as a constitutional right, he noted.
"In my view, the right of an Indian citizen to cast his vote is central to the basic structure doctrine itself," he said, adding that Article 326 couldnot be tinkered with. "One may be a billionaire and one may be a rickshaw puller; yet both will have their votes, and the value of their votes would be equal," he said.
The remarks drew political reactions, with Congress leader Jairam Ramesh saying Justice Bhuyan had forcefully affirmed the constitutional importance
of voting rights and renewing criticism of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Invoking US judge Justice Felix Frankfurter's observation that the highest
office in a democracy is that of the citizen, Justice Bhuyan asked: "And what is the worth of a citizen without the voting right?"