The adoption of universal adult franchise, as the first Chief Election Commissioner Sukumar Sen said, was a “massive act of faith”, and its implementation was a colossal task, unparalleled in the history of humankind. Sutured to collective expression of sovereignty and capacity for self-determination, it marked a rupture from colonial subjection. Restricted franchise under colonialism was sustained by a structure of alliance between imperial, feudal and masculinist ideologies that buttressed the empire against challenges presented by the anti-colonial movement.Construed as inherently dangerous, the right to vote was handed down gradually and cautiously. Universal franchise was integral to citizenship’s promise of equality, remarkable for its potential to unsettle the foundations of inequality through rightful claims to participate in the exercise of political power.A prior consensus on universal adult franchise existed in the Constituent Assembly, drawing from the anti-colonial movement and swaraj as a constitutional future. As a democratic principle, recognising the claims of each person to sovereign personhood, it became consequential for choosing parliamentary democracy as the preferred form of government.The enormity of the task was depicted in a series of cartoons by Shankar Pillai, who used the figure of first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru as a critical prism to explore the inaugural years of the republic. Shankar depicted universal adult franchise in one of the cartoons as akin to moving an elephant by its tail – a humongous task –ponderous when initiated but emphatic and majestic when set in motion.In the narrative report of the first general election, Sen also describes the “chequered history” of the preparation of the electoral roll in India between 1948 and 1951. Sen attributes this to the non-existence of an electoral law in the early stages of the preparation of electoral rolls, the non-completion of the delimitation exercise and the absence, until March 1950, of a “whole-time central directing or supervisory authority” to oversee the preparations.The preparation of the electoral rolls, which “proceeded on presumptions” was unsettled when the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (RPA) came into operation, necessitating “a full scale revision of the draft rolls” to meet the requirements of new eligibility rules. The rolls, when finally published in November 1951, were not as accurate or satisfactory as the Chief Election Commissioner would have wished. They demonstrated, however, a collective will to make the transition to a republican democracy – rather than a will to stateness manifesting the capacity of the state to exercise its authority.As a governmental activity of identification and enumeration of the voting population, this exercise was, moreover, distinct. Pegged onto the draft constitution for its legitimacy, its objective was not the enhancement of state power but the affirmation of popular sovereignty.The preparation of the electoral roll in the first general election was exceptional for giving materiality to universal adult franchise, promised in the draft constitution in the absence (for the most part) of precise laws to guide the procedure, which was being enacted, as Sen lamented, “piecemeal”.The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll is also exceptional but for a different reason. The SIR adopts an unprecedented, extraordinary procedure to revise the electoral rolls, going beyond the provisions of Section 21 of the RPA by preparing an electoral roll for the entire country afresh, based on the presumption of non-citizenship. In doing this, the ECI appears to be emphasising the “control” rather than the “superintendence and guidance” aspects of its responsibility of preparing the electoral rolls drawing upon its plenary powers in Article 324.Electoral rolls are dynamic and robust and, over the years, have also become imbricated in political contestations, for example, in Assam in 1979 through 1983, where, ironically, they also became consequential for proving citizenship through legacy for inclusion in the National Register of Citizens. In such contests, the electoral roll assumes the character of a political artefact through which the state reproduces its authority through its power of disbursing citizenship.In such a context, Justice Bagchi’s observations while hearing an appeal by “deleted voters” in West Bengal, become significant. Considering that the casting of votes has begun and the electoral roll “frozen” before the completion of the court-mandated procedure for revising it – before the last petitioner’s appeal has been heard and resolved – the honourable judge’s description of the right to vote as a “sentimental right” raises a host of normative questions. These questions pertain not only to the undeniable affective aspects of suffrage but also its enigmatic location in the constitutional architecture.Within the Constituent Assembly, there was agreement on the Fundamental Rights Sub-committee’s recommendation that the right to vote should be treated as a fundamental right of every citizen to choose in free, secret and periodic elections (Shiva Rao, Vol 5, 2022, p.460) In the Advisory Committee, Dr B.R. Ambedkar was emphatic that adult franchise and free elections were in the nature of fundamental rights. Apprehensions about excessive powers of the Union/Executive in the conduct of election, where it had resided under the Government of India Act 1935, led to the recommendation that elections should be managed by an election commission whose autonomy or independence were to be preserved through various measures, including the procedure of appointment of its members.It was also agreed, however, that matters pertaining to franchise should not be prejudged as fundamental rights. The provisions were finally placed in a separate chapter on elections. This, the Assembly felt was not a “light-hearted” decision but a “proper” placement to determine the “eligibility” of electors (Constituent Assembly Debate, October 14, 1949).While Article 325 lay down the principle of non-discrimination in inclusion in the electoral roll, Article 326 provides for universal adult suffrage, giving effect to the constitutional principle of equality of the individual citizen-voter. Article 327 prepares the ground for statutory abridgment of universal franchise by giving the legislature the power to prescribe disqualifications.When the Advisory Committee on Minorities and Fundamental Rights recommended setting up an Election Commission of India as an autonomous constitutional body to conduct elections, it did so with the concern for the preservation of the right to vote and the secrecy of the vote. An autonomous institutional machinery for conducting elections was considered essential to ensure that a parliamentary democracy based on adult franchise worked with adequate safeguards. With its placement in the constitutional architecture in the chapter on elections, the right to vote was woven into the Election Commission of India’s responsibility to prepare the electoral rolls and its commitment towards holding free and fair elections, eschewing political influence.While free and fair elections and parliamentary democracy are part of the basic structure of the constitution, an affirmation of the right to vote as an indispensable link between the two has been uneven. In the early 2000s, the Supreme Court of India decided that the right to know the antecedents of a candidate was a voter’s fundamental right, independent of statutory rights under the election law. Arguing that democracy could not survive “without free and fair elections” as well as “free and fairly informed voters”, it construed the act of voting as a form of speech, and read it into the right to freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution (Union of India vs Association for Democratic Rights, 2002 and Peoples Union of Civil Liberties vs Union of India, 2003).The majority judgment of the constitutional bench in Anoop Baranwal (2023) argued that the ‘right to elect’, even if it was treated as a statutory right, could not be divorced from the mandate of Article 326, making it a right of the greatest importance and the foundation for a free and fair election. In his concurring judgement, Justice Ajay Rastogi preferred to see it as a fundamental right, which would raise the level of scrutiny of the working of the ECI.While deeply complex and fraught interpretations coexist, arrayed along positions that see franchise as a constitutional and/or a fundamental right and those that see it as right regulated by statutes, the idea now presented by Justice Joymalya Bagchi, that the “right to remain on the roll and the right to vote” are not just constitutional but also sentimental rights, steers attention to “deprivation” of the right to vote, and its ramifications for political personhood, citizenship and belonging.Over the past several years, democratic upsurge and the democratic consolidation of the electoral system was seen as an indication of people’s trust in the conduct of electoral competition. The SIR has, however, inserted a risky moment in this narrative, taking it in another direction. Electoral integrity scholars have emphasised the need for fairness and certainty of procedures to ensure trust in electoral competition as the modality for facilitating democratic and non-conflictual processes of regime renewal/change. Those who see election commissions as fourth branch institutions invest it with the potential of upholding democracy. Others, however, caution that the ECI’s powers are susceptible to executive control due to the constitution’s design as a map of power with centralising tendencies.Elections are extraordinary times requiring proficient rule making and efficient implementation that defer political power through exceptional regulatory control. The SIR has made the electoral roll part of state practices of identification and the regimes of power they embody. The political culture of authority rather than explanation that ensures that every exercise of power is accompanied by a justification that satisfies constitutional standards has displaced universal suffrage from its sublime location as a republican ideal to a right that can be deferred or withdrawn through executive measures.Anupama Roy is Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU and Ujjwal Kumar Singh is Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.