Features Of Universal Adult Franchise And Emergency Provisions
Universal Adult Franchise
The Indian Constitution adopts universal adult franchise as a basis of elections to the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies. Every citizen who is not less than 18 years of age has a right to vote without any discrimination of caste, race, religion, sex, literacy, wealth, and so on. The voting age was reduced to 18 years from 21 years in 1989 by the 61st Constitutional Amendment Act.
The introduction of the universal adult franchise by the Constitution-makers was a bold experiment and highly remarkable in view of the vast size of the country, its huge population, high poverty, social inequality and overwhelming illiteracy.
The universal adult franchise makes democracy broad-based, enhances the self-respect and prestige of the common people, upholds the principle of equality, enables minorities to protect their interests and opens up new hopes and vistas for weaker sections. Single Citizenship: Though the Indian Constitution is federal and envisages a dual polity (Centre and states), it provides for only single citizenship, that is, Indian citizenship.
In countries like the USA, on the other hand, each person is not only a citizen of the USA but also a citizen of the particular state to which he belongs. Thus, he owes allegiance to both and enjoys dual sets of rights – one conferred by the National government and another by the state government.
In India, all citizens irrespective of the state in which they are born or reside enjoy the same political and civil rights of citizenship all over the country and no discrimination is made between them except in few cases like tribal areas, Jammu and Kashmir, and so on. Despite the constitutional provision for single citizenship and uniform rights for all the people, India has been witnessing communal riots, class conflicts, caste wars, linguistic clashes and ethnic disputes. This means that the cherished goal of the Constitution-makers to build a united and integrated Indian nation has not been fully realised.
Emergency Provisions
The Indian Constitution contains elaborate emergency provisions to enable the President to meet any extraordinary situation effectively. The rationality behind the incorporation of these provisions is to safeguard the sovereignty, unity, integrity and security of the country, the democratic political system and the Constitution.
The Constitution envisages three types of emergencies, namely:
(a) National emergency on the ground of war’ or external aggression or armed rebellion(Article 352).
(b) State emergency (President’s Rule) on the ground of failure of Constitutional machinery in the states (Article 356) or failure to comply with the directions of the Centre (Article 365); and
(c) Financial emergency on the ground of threat to the financial stability or credit of India (Article 360). During an emergency, the Central Government becomes all-powerful and the states go into total control of the centre.
It converts the federal structure into a unitary one without a formal amendment of the Constitution. This kind of transformation of the political system from federal (during normal times) to unitary (during an emergency) is a unique feature of the Indian Constitution.
Check out the notes on Union and its territory.