On 21 October 2026, the Delhi High Court heard a petition from Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka of the Cockroach Janta Party against their custody, which arose from preventive proceedings before a Special Executive Magistrate, on the apprehension of a breach of the peace, and not from judicial remand in an FIR. In the course of the hearing, the Bench put a question no constitutional lawyer would have anticipated: what were the petitioners’ ages? Counsel replied that Saurav was 27 and Ashutosh 32. “Then you are not Gen Z,” the Court observed, and then asked what Gen Z was. After counsel’s reply, the Court repeated the same sentence, now ending with a question mark. In a matter where the petitioners’ ages were otherwise irrelevant, except to establish that they were majors, this was perhaps the first time a constitutional court had asked who, exactly, belongs to Gen Z. The petition itself went no further. With the Bench pointing them to the remedies of appeal and revision before the statutory forums, the two withdrew it that afternoon. Later the same evening, the Special Executive Magistrate ordered their release, after seven days in custody and notwithstanding a police request for three more.
Indian law already knows a great many age-based classifications. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 distinguishes children in conflict with law from children in need of care and protection, and carves out a special regime for those aged 16 to 18. “Gen Z” has never been one of them. The more serious question the exchange opens is why the Constitution still keeps that generation waiting at the door of the legislature.
A Ladder With a Missing Rung
The ages at which the Indian State trusts its citizens form a curious ladder:
16: a licence for a gearless motorcycle of up to 50 cc, with a parent’s or guardian’s consent
16½ to 19½: entry to the National Defence Academy
18: the vote, an ordinary driving licence, marriage for women
20: a licence to drive a transport vehicle
21: marriage for men; eligibility for the Civil Services Examination; and, under the 73rd and 74th Amendments, a seat in a panchayat or a municipality
25: a seat in the Lok Sabha or a Vidhan Sabha; also, in Delhi and Punjab, buying liquor or even being served a drink in a restaurant
30: a seat in the Rajya Sabha or a Legislative Council
35: the office of President
Two rungs deserve attention. The first is the panchayat rung. The Constitution itself, since 1992, has allowed a 21-year-old to be elected sarpanch, panch or municipal councillor, with authority over budgets, works and the welfare of thousands of people. Parliament has already conceded the principle. It has merely confined it to the third tier.
The second is the liquor vend, the familiar theka. In two jurisdictions, the law treats the right to buy a bottle of whisky, or even to be served a peg in a restaurant, and the right to seek a mandate from a constituency as maturity of the same order, both deferred to 25. The coincidence is less flattering to the legislature than to the excise department.
Commissioned at Twenty-One, Magistrate at Twenty-Three, Too Young for the Hustings
The armed forces and the higher civil services are particularly instructive. A cadet who enters the National Defence Academy at 16½ to 19½ is commissioned, after Academy and pre-commissioning training, at about 21. The young lieutenant holds the commission of the President as Supreme Commander and leads men under arms, if need be in battle.
A candidate for the Civil Services Examination becomes eligible at 21, reckoned against the cut-off date the examination prescribes, and a successful candidate typically joins the IAS or the IPS at 22 or 23. The present writer cleared the examination at 22, straight out of engineering college. Within about two years of joining, the IAS officer sits as a Sub-Divisional Magistrate, and the IPS officer commands a police sub-division as an Assistant Superintendent of Police. The magistrate issues prohibitory orders, binds persons over to keep the peace, conducts inquests, and runs the revenue administration of a sub-division of several lakh people. (These are, as it happens, the very preventive powers just exercised against the two petitioners: the familiar “107/151” proceedings of the old Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which a whole generation of SDMs conducted, now reborn as Sections 126 and 170 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.)
The Republic thus finds a 21-year-old fit to order men into battle, and a 23-year-old mature enough to order an unlawful assembly to disperse by the use of force, which in the extreme case may extend to ordering the police to open fire. It does not find either of them mature enough to ask the same citizens for their votes. The selection test is a competitive examination taken once, while the electoral test is the judgement of an entire constituency renewed every five years. If anything, the second is the more searching scrutiny.
It may be objected that the cadet and the probationer are not let loose at 21 or 23. They pass a rigorous selection, and then years of training at the Academy, at Mussoorie or Hyderabad, and on probation in the field. The objection, however, strengthens the case for a lower age. The State insists on that preparation because it appoints these officers itself, for a career of some 35 years, and they never answer to a voter. The legislator answers to the voter every five years. Beyond citizenship, a place on the electoral roll and the absence of statutory disqualifications, the Constitution prescribes no examination, no educational qualification and no training for an MLA or an MP. It leaves the judgement of fitness to the people, and age is the only filter it imposes before the people may make that judgement.
The Gap That Grew
The 25-year threshold in Articles 84(b) and 173(b) was settled in the Constituent Assembly in 1949. At the time, the franchise began at 21, so the gap between voting and contesting was four years. When the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988 lowered the voting age to 18, the candidacy age was left untouched, and the gap widened to seven years. No one has since explained why a citizen trusted to choose a legislator at 18 must wait seven years to become one.
The question has not been ignored entirely. In August 2023, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, chaired by the BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi, recommended lowering the candidacy age. It proposed 18 for the Lok Sabha, citing the practice of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and a reduction for the Assemblies as well. The Election Commission of India disagreed, on the ground that it was unrealistic to expect 18-year-olds to have the experience and maturity the responsibility demands.
Twenty-one meets the Commission’s objection on its own terms. It ties candidacy to the age at which the law already treats a citizen as fully adult for the gravest private and public commitments: marriage for men, the President’s commission in the armed forces, entry into the higher civil services, and election to the panchayat and the municipality.
Barricade or Ballot
The same hearing produced a second, weightier set of observations. Justice Subramonium Prasad noted that when protesters break a barricade, others may follow in breach of the prohibitory order under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. He observed that what had started abroad as student protests had descended into arson and looting, and that a protest which begins peacefully can pass beyond its organisers’ control. Police permission, he said, exists not only to restrain the protester but also to keep unwanted elements from joining and spoiling the cause.
These are sober words, and the experience of Dhaka and Kathmandu bears them out. They also point to a remedy. The street is where an aspiration goes when it finds no seat in the House, and a generation that sees no route from the campus to the chamber will be tempted towards the barricade. India’s median age is under thirty, while the average member of the Lok Sabha is in his or her mid-fifties. Any institution with that kind of age gap will misread the anxieties of the young about jobs, examinations, paper leaks, housing, climate and the digital economy. The surest way to understand the urges and aspirations of Gen Z is to let some of Gen Z sit on the Treasury and Opposition benches and speak for itself. The ballot is the institutional answer to the barricade.
Ride the Same Bill
The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty-first Amendment) Bill, 2026, which tied women’s reservation to a fresh delimitation and an enlarged Lok Sabha, fell in a special session on 17 April 2026. It drew 298 votes in favour and 230 against, short of the 352 a constitutional amendment required. The Government has since signalled that it will try again in another special session once it can command two-thirds of both Houses.
That fresh Bill is the natural vehicle for a clause lowering the age in Articles 84(b) and 173(b) from 25 to 21 for the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas. The thresholds of 30 for the Rajya Sabha and the Legislative Councils could stay as they are, consistent with the idea of a revising chamber. Three considerations commend the pairing.
First, it is a reform that no party can afford to oppose in public. Every party courts the young voter, and every party has a youth wing whose leaders are kept waiting at 25. A clause of this kind could help build the near-unanimity the delimitation package has so far lacked.
Second, the reform carries no federal anxiety. Unlike the redistribution of seats, it takes nothing from any State. Articles 84 and 173 do not fall within the proviso to Article 368, so the clause would need only Parliament’s special majority and not ratification by half the State Legislatures.
Third, it completes the logic of the package itself. A Bill that seeks to bring one-third women into the legislatures is a statement that the House must look more like the country. A House that looks like the country must also be younger.
The Calendar Is Not the Electorate
The Constitution’s framers trusted the people to judge a candidate’s character, competence and suitability. A minimum age is a crude proxy for those qualities, defensible only at the margin. At 21, the margin has been reached. Let the electorate, not the calendar, decide whether a young aspirant is ready.
The Delhi High Court asked, half in jest, whether the petitioners were Gen Z. When the Government next brings the delimitation and women’s reservation amendment to a special session, Parliament can answer a more useful question by adding one clause to it, and letting that generation contest at 21.