UPSC Prelims 2017 · Question 36 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2017 question on Right to Vote Legal Right
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2017
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectPolity
- TopicConstitutional Bodies
- DifficultyHard
- TypeDirect
Right to vote and to be elected in India is a
Show answer
Answer: D. Legal Right
Verdict
The answer is a legal right. The right to vote and to be elected is statutory rather than fundamental or constitutional in the strict sense.
Analysis
The Supreme Court has held that the right to elect, fundamental though it is to democracy, is neither a fundamental right nor a common law right but a statutory one, and the same applies to the right to be elected and to dispute an election. These rights are conferred and regulated by the Representation of the People Acts. Article 326 provides for adult suffrage as the basis of elections, which is why the constitutional right option is tempting, but the enforceable individual right itself arises from statute.
Source
Supreme Court judgments including Jyoti Basu against Debi Ghosal, with related case law.
How to crack it
Sort every right into fundamental, constitutional and legal, because the three attract different remedies and UPSC tests the distinction directly. A fundamental right is enforceable under Article 32, a constitutional right appears in the text outside Part III, and a legal right is created by ordinary legislation and can be altered by Parliament without amendment. Note that this area is genuinely contested in the case law, so keep the judicial formulation rather than an intuitive one.