The Proposition
Representatives should administer the country. Citizens should decide the rules by which it is governed.
Jan Sabha replaces representative voting with direct, line-item voting on issues. No candidates, no parties, no symbols, no manifestos. Every ballot is a specific question with a published cost, a funding source, and a responsible authority — decided on its own, not bundled into a party platform.
Administration, foreign affairs, defence and emergency powers stay with a professional executive. What moves to citizens is legislative authority: the power to originate, approve, and reject policy.
Ten Founding Principles
- 1.
Citizen Initiative
Citizens can propose legislation or policy directly.
- 2.
Citizen Referendum
Above a verified support threshold, a vote is binding, not advisory.
- 3.
Citizen Review
Any existing law can be forced back into a vote if enough citizens demand it.
- 4.
Participatory Budgeting
A fixed share of public spending is allocated by direct citizen vote.
- 5.
Mandatory Transparency
Every line item is published with cost, funding source, beneficiary and risk before any vote.
- 6.
Executive Retained, Legislative Transferred
Administration, foreign affairs and emergency powers stay professional; law-making authority moves to citizens.
- 7.
Minority Shield
No citizen vote can strip a constitutionally protected right.
- 8.
Independent Verification
Every claim, government or campaign, is fact-checked by a body neither controls.
- 9.
Digital + Physical Access
Voting happens at ration shops, panchayat offices and post offices, not only on phones.
- 10.
Mandate Tracking
Every citizen decision gets a public dashboard showing what was implemented, and what wasn't.
How Citizens Vote
No candidates. No parties. No symbols. No manifestos. Each ballot is a single line item: one issue, one plain-language question, one yes/no or ranked choice.
Every line item carries, before it can qualify for a vote:
- A plain-language statement of the problem and the proposed change
- A published cost and an identified funding source
- The authority responsible for implementation
- An independent compatibility check against laws and line items already passed
Accessibility
Party symbols are replaced with issue pictograms — a simple, consistent icon per policy domain, so literacy is never a barrier to voting on a question, the way it once was to identifying a party.
Why line items instead of a manifesto: a manifesto bundles dozens of unrelated positions into one take-it-or-leave-it package. Line items let a citizen support a tax reform and oppose a labour policy from the same sitting government without being forced to choose a side on everything at once.
The Platform
Every line item moves through five stages before and after a vote.
- Propose — A citizen or ministry submits a line item in plain language.
- Debate — Experts, affected groups and citizens submit arguments for and against.
- Verify — An independent body publishes cost, funding source and a compatibility check against existing law.
- Vote — Citizens vote yes/no or ranked choice on that line item alone.
- Track — Implementation is published on a public dashboard until resolved.
Citizen Mandate example
Live dashboard →| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Issue | Road potholes |
| Demand | Resolution within 7 days of verified complaint |
| Support | 8,12,430 citizens |
| Responsible authority | Municipal Corporation |
| Status | 63% resolved |
| Overdue | 37% — flagged for public review |
The Track stage is the mechanism that keeps this from becoming another opinion-poll website: every mandate stays visible, with a live resolution rate, until it is closed.
Safeguards Against Known Failure Modes
| Risk | Where it's documented | Jan Sabha safeguard |
|---|---|---|
| Fiscal illusion — citizens cut taxes and raise spending in separate votes with no view of the combined deficit | California ballot initiatives | Mandatory compatibility and funding-source check before any line item qualifies for a vote |
| Majority overriding minority rights | Standard critique of pure referendum systems | Principle 7, Minority Shield — no vote can strip a constitutionally protected right |
| Complex questions compressed into a single yes/no, decided on ad spend rather than substance | Brexit referendum | Mandatory Debate and Verify stages precede every vote; independent fact-checking body |
| Agenda-setting captured by whoever controls what reaches the ballot | General critique of direct democracy | Citizen Initiative and Citizen Review (Principles 1 and 3) keep agenda-setting open to citizens, not only a Jan Sabha secretariat |
| Urban, connected citizens dominate participation | Common critique of digital-only civic platforms | Principle 9 — physical voting access at ration shops, panchayat offices, post offices |
| Permanent administrators become unaccountable once elections are removed | Bureaucratic capture, general public-administration risk | Public performance dashboards with a defined citizen-triggered review and removal threshold for administrators |
Precedents Already Running
| Place | Model | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Taiwan (Join / vTaiwan) | Citizen petitions reaching 5,000 signatures force a public, on-record government response within 2 months | Nearly 5 million users on Join; vTaiwan helped shape 26 legislative proposals |
| Kerala, India (People's Plan Campaign) | Gram Sabhas directly decide local development priorities and budgets | 1,214 local governments; 35–40% of state development spending devolved since 1996 |
| Switzerland | Binding national referendums on specific policy questions, several times a year | Over a century of continuous operation |
| Ireland | A lottery-selected Citizens' Assembly deliberates, then the full electorate votes by binding referendum | Used for marriage equality and abortion referendums |
None of these fully removed elected representatives — each kept a professional executive or legislature alongside direct citizen authority. That is the model Principle 6 follows.
The Constitutional Path
Constitutional amendment in India runs through Parliament under Article 368, which sets the procedure and, for certain changes, requires ratification by half the state legislatures.
The Supreme Court's basic structure doctrine, from Kesavananda Bharati, holds that some fundamental features of the Constitution cannot be amended away even by Parliament itself. Whether elected representative government counts as a protected feature is an open, serious legal question — not a detail to defer, but a first-order constraint on how far Jan Sabha's binding-referendum powers can go without a fight in the courts, not just in public opinion.
The practical path is incremental, not a single amendment:
- Citizen Petition→
- Citizen Proposal→
- Citizen Consultation→
- Citizen Vote→
- Citizen Mandate→
- Citizen Review
Each stage built and tested — starting at the municipal or state level, where Kerala already shows a legal and institutional precedent — before the larger constitutional question is asked at the national level.
Opening Questions and the Open Call
Line items are collected from 2 October 2026 to 26 January 2027. On 26 January 2027, the first verified line item is listed to be formulated as a ballot. Seven opening questions start the conversation — each is a draft for citizens to amend, back or beat with a better one, and each number below links to its source on the item's page.
| Opening question | Why it's on the list | The number |
|---|
None of these is verified. Each becomes a real ballot only once it clears Verify: a published cost, a funding source, and a named responsible authority. Read why the list starts here on the Vaada Ledger.
October 2 Launch Plan — Two Parts
Fourteen days is enough to launch the movement. It is not enough to launch the working voting platform. Treating October 2 as a platform launch risks shipping a broken first Citizen Mandate — the exact “populism with no follow-through” critique this design exists to avoid. Splitting the two protects both.
Part 1 — Now (2 October 2026)
- The manifesto and the hook question, public and shareable.
- The Ten Founding Principles and the core taglines, live on a simple website and social channels.
- Seven opening questions and the open call: line items collected from 2 October 2026 to 26 January 2027, each with a source-linked evidence list.
- A signup or pledge mechanism — citizens registering support for the idea itself, not yet voting on a line item.
- A stated, public commitment to when the platform (Part 2) goes live.
Part 2 — Future (26 January 2027)
- The CONSUL DEMOCRACY fork, the Verify body, and the first real, trackable Citizen Mandate — the Phase 0–Phase 1 work below.
- This runs on its own timeline behind the Part 1 launch, with progress updates shared publicly so the pledge list from October 2 has somewhere real to go.
Execution Roadmap
Phase 0
Build
Months 1–3
- Build the Propose/Debate/Verify/Vote/Track platform as a working pilot, not a full national system.
- Assemble the independent Verify body — a small panel with fiscal, legal and domain expertise, structurally separate from any campaign or party.
- Draft the legal basis for the pilot under existing municipal or panchayat law, so no constitutional amendment is needed to start.
Success: Verify body seated; platform live for one pilot line item
Phase 1
Local Pilot
Months 3–6
- Launch in one municipality or district with an existing participatory-budgeting precedent (Kerala's panchayat structure is the strongest legal fit).
- Run one real, local, low-stakes line item end-to-end — a pothole or water-supply mandate — with a public Track dashboard.
- Publish resolution data weekly; treat the dashboard itself as the core proof of concept.
Success: One mandate resolved above 60%, publicly tracked, with no successful legal or fiscal challenge
Phase 2
State Scale
Months 6–12
- Expand to state-level line items where legal authority already allows citizen input (state budgeting, local infrastructure).
- Formalize the compatibility-check process before any budget-linked line item goes to a vote.
- Begin publishing an annual Mandate Report: every line item run, its outcome, and its resolution rate.
Success: Multiple states running line items; a published, citable Mandate Report
Phase 3
National Question
Year 2+
- Bring the constitutional question to citizens directly: should a binding, issue-based referendum mechanism be recognised at the national level.
- Engage constitutional scholars on the basic-structure doctrine question before any drafting begins.
- Only at this stage does the campaign ask for what Parliament itself would need to act on — after the mechanism has a working track record, not before.
Success: A credible constitutional case, backed by a multi-year track record rather than sentiment alone
Open Questions
- Who runs the independent Verify body, and how is its independence from both government and campaign guaranteed?
- What is the exact citizen-support threshold for a line item to qualify for a binding vote?
- What is the review and removal mechanism for professional administrators once elections no longer select them?
- Which state or municipality is the right first testbed, given Kerala's existing legal precedent for devolved participatory budgeting?
- Does the Jan Sabha mechanism require a constitutional amendment, or can early phases run under existing panchayat and municipal law?
These are the questions the pledge list exists to help answer.
Make your mark