Universal adult franchise

Universal adult franchise means every adult citizen gets one vote, and all votes have equal value. A very rich person presses the button once; a very poor person presses it once. One vote each, worth the same.

So every Indian citizen aged 18 and above has the right to vote, whatever their caste, creed, race, religion, gender, education or income. That is what the word 'universal' means.

'Franchise' means a right given by the constitution or government; 'suffrage' means the same thing. The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1988.

Article 326 makes this the basis for elections to the Lok Sabha, to every state and union territory assembly, and to all local elections in villages and cities. Nobody may vote for someone else, and you must be registered in your constituency: an area whose voters elect one representative.

The scale is worth remembering. In the summer of 2024, over 968 million voters were eligible, across 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. India has 3.1 million elected representatives (1.3 million of them women) in more than 250,000 local government bodies.

Now compare that with before. Before Independence, only around 13 per cent of Indians were allowed to vote.

So the change at Independence was not a small adjustment. It went from roughly one in eight adults to everyone.

India was also one of the early nations to give women the vote. In many countries women fought long and hard for it (Swiss women only got it in 1971), while in India a forward-looking constitution and deep democratic values rooted in ancient traditions gave women the vote from the very beginning.