The correct answer is Option 1- The Constitution of India Bill (1895)
The Constitution of India Bill (1895) was the first non-official attempt at drafting a constitution for India, which declared every citizen born in India had the right to take part in the affairs of the country and be admitted to public office.
Universal franchise:
Two other core features may also be regarded as achievements. First, it is no mean achievement to commit oneself to universal franchise, specially when there is widespread belief that traditional hierarchies in India are congealed and more or less impossible to eliminate, and when the right to vote has only recently been extended to women and to the working class in stable, Western democracies. Once the idea of a nation took root among the elite, the idea of democratic self-government followed. Thus, Indian nationalism always conceived of a political order based on the will of every single member of society. The idea of universal franchise lay securely within the heart of nationalism. As early as the Constitution of India Bill (1895), the first non-official attempt at drafting a constitution for India, the author declared that every citizen, i.e., anyone born in India, had a right to take part in the affairs of the country and be admitted to public office. The Motilal Nehru Report (1928) reaffirms this conception of citizenship, reiterating that every person of either sex who has attained the age of twenty-one is entitled to vote for the House of Representatives or Parliament. Thus from very early on, universal franchise was considered as the most important and legitimate instrument by which the will of the nation was to be properly expressed. |
