NEW DELHI: Why should people facing trial in petty cases to heinous crimes, like murder or rape, be denied right to vote given the golden legal principle that presumes a person to be "innocent till found guilty by a court of law". A PIL asked this question in Supreme Court on Friday and said because of the bar under Section 62(5) of Representation of People (RP) Act an estimated five lakh undertrial prisoners are deprived of their voting rights. A bench of CJI B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran sought responses from Centre and Election Commission on a PIL after hearing arguments from advocate Prashant Bhushan . However, according to 'Prison Statistics India 2023' - published by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 73.5% of all prisoners are undertrials, 3.9 lakh out of 5.3 l

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