The Silent Revolution of the Vote and the New Crisis in Bihar

The Indian Constitution explicitly grants citizens over the age of 18 the right to engage in elections, the grand celebration of democracy, and to contribute to forming a government of their preference. In the 1980s, a significant amendment was introduced for assembly and Lok Sabha elections, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years. This modification was implemented by the central government under the late Rajiv Gandhi. Interestingly, the primary push for reducing the voting age came from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJP) at that time. Subsequently, India witnessed over a dozen central and state elections, with young voters actively participating.

The people of India did not get the right to vote as a gift, but got it as a strong democratic foundation of independent India, for which Mahatma Gandhi had clearly declared during the freedom movement itself and had promised the people of India in 1934 itself that on gaining independence, every adult citizen, male and female, of every class and community will be given the right to one vote without any discrimination and this will be such a right through which the people of India will be able to form their popular governments on the basis of majority obtained in the elections.

Actually this was a silent revolution which Gandhiji brought because the British had instilled a sense of slavery in the people who had been living under slavery for a thousand years during their two hundred years of rule. Gandhiji broke this sense of slavery with the right to vote and announced that the Indian voter will now be self-sufficient. Even the big political parties and their leaders will have to go to his door every five years and beg for votes from him. To provide purity and sanctity to the entire election system, there will be an independent Election Commission which will not be a part of the government and will be directly accountable to the voters of India. But it is a tragedy that this Election Commission, while conducting a thorough investigation of the voter list in Bihar, is removing the names of the voters considered to be young in the state from the voter list. I have written many times before that the government has nothing to do with how the Election Commission works. In its eyes, every political party participating in the election is the same. It does not care about which party is in power and which is in the opposition.

The Election Commission considers political parties to be the biggest partners in Indian democracy because it is through them that voters express their preference in elections and see the formation of a majority government. But what a tragedy that while checking the voter list in Bihar, the Election Commission itself is keeping 65 lakh people out of the voter list and is arguing that more than 22 lakh voters have died, 36 lakh have left their homes and migrated to other places and seven lakh are voters at many places. I am not challenging the figures of the Election Commission but I am saying that these 65 lakh voters should be thoroughly checked because according to the voter list of 2024, all of them were present in Bihar. The English newspaper Indian Express thoroughly investigated these 65 lakh voters and found that in the three districts of Bihar, Madhubani, Patna and East Champaran, the names of 10 lakh 63 thousand voters were removed from the list. These include about 38 percent of voters aged between 18 years to 40 years. Earlier the Election Commission was refusing to make the list of these 65 lakh voters public but on the orders of the Supreme Court it had to make all the names public. These three districts of Bihar are considered to be the most populated. This conclusion has been arrived at on the basis of a survey of polling stations in these three districts. There are 36 assembly seats in these three districts.

Everyone knows that there are a total of 243 assembly seats in Bihar. Out of these, names of more than 16 percent of the total 65 lakh voters who were deleted have appeared in 36 seats. This is just a sample of what has come to light in the investigation. If 37.8 percent of the more than one million voters are between the ages of 18 and 40, then it can be easily understood how much of a setback the campaign to motivate the youth to vote will suffer. It is the first responsibility of the Election Commission to give a satisfactory answer to this because the Election Commission is such a constitutional institution on whose credibility the democracy of India is tied. The cruelty happening in India is that the Election Commission is becoming suspicious among the common people while the public has been believing till now that the decision of the Commission is not tied to political equations in any way and it stands as an impartial judge during the elections. Therefore, it is very important that the Election Commission takes every necessary step to keep its prestige high and assure the people of India that the voter list prepared by it will be completely error-free. If this is the condition of three out of the total 38 districts of Bihar, then one can guess about the voter lists of the remaining 35 districts. Therefore, the young voters of the other 35 districts should become alert from now itself and show their Aadhar card or any other necessary document to the Election Commission for their rights because Aadhar card has also been considered a necessary document only after the order of the Supreme Court. There is still time till 1 September. Till then, legitimate voters can present their claim.