Single General Electoral Roll and Prohibition of Communal Electorates
Official heading: “No person to be ineligible for inclusion in, or to claim to be included in a special, electoral roll on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex”
- Source edition
- The Constitution of India (as on 1 May 2026)
- Source locator
- Part XV, Article 325, printed page 187
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1. In One Sentence
Establishes a single general electoral roll for every constituency and prohibits exclusion or separate rolls based on religion, race, caste, or sex.
2. What It Means in Everyday Language
Article 325 abolished the colonial-era system of separate and communal electorates, replacing it with a single, unified voter register for each territorial constituency.
No citizen can be denied registration on an electoral roll on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or any of them.
Similarly, no group or individual may claim inclusion in a separate or privileged electoral roll on communal or sectarian grounds, cementing civic equality as the foundation of Indian constitutional democracy.
3. Practical Illustrative Example
A community organization petitions the government to create a separate electoral roll exclusively for members of a religious minority in a city constituency.
4. Important Limits, Qualifications & Exceptions
Article 325 ensures non-discriminatory, universal civic participation across all Indian territorial constituencies.
- Universal roll: Requires one general electoral roll for every territorial constituency in parliamentary and state legislative elections.
- Anti-discrimination guarantee: Protects every citizen from discriminatory exclusion based on religion, race, caste, or sex.
- Ban on communal electorates: Forbids sectarian demands for separate or segregated electoral registers.
5. Operative Constitutional Text
6. Sources & Historical Assembly Deliberations
Assembly quotations are withheld until wording, dates, and attribution have been checked against the primary record.
- •Government of India (Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice) • Part XV, Article 325, printed page 187 • Human source-link check pending
Primary PDF accessed and transcribed with AI assistance on 14 October 2026. Formatting and amendment annotation markers are omitted; operative wording is retained. This is not human legal review. Later amendments and commencement notifications have not been comprehensively checked.