Universal franchise and right to contest

Beyond choosing a method of counting votes, the Constitution had to answer two more basic questions: who gets to vote, and who gets to stand for election? On both, India's Constitution follows well-established democratic practice.

The right to vote. Democratic elections require universal adult franchise — every adult citizen eligible to vote, with no distinction of wealth, education, caste, or gender. Many democracies took decades of struggle to extend this right, particularly to women. India's Constitution-makers instead guaranteed it to every adult citizen from the very start, without ever restricting it by education or property, out of a firm belief that all adult citizens are equally capable of judging what is good for their society and their own constituency — a choice consistent with the constitutional principle of equality studied in the chapter on Fundamental Rights. The definition of "adult" has itself changed: until 1989, an adult meant a citizen above 21; a constitutional amendment that year lowered the voting age to 18, extending the franchise to millions of young citizens. …