Elections in India – Current state, upcoming elections and need for Electoral reforms

Introduction

Indian democracy derives its power from the “will of the people “.Indian citizens vote to elect

their representatives and these elected representatives have the duty of forming the

government. It is not a direct form of democracy as the citizens of India do not have the

power to recall or reject an elected representative on basis of unsatisfactory performance.

Many of the countries after getting freedom from the colonial role have succumbed to

dictatorship. While we can feel proud that India has managed to remain a democracy in spite

of its size and diversity, we also need to reflect on the challenges in front of us. Even though

citizens are often unsatisfied with government because of recurring news of scam, scandals,

inflations, policies etc, the constitution doesn’t give power to its citizen to dissolve the

government. This limitation of the citizens to just exercise their power once in five years has

lead to the below par performance of the elected representatives. This problem is prevalent in

most of the democratic countries. Switzerland had come up with a solution for the same as

early as in 1848. They have a proper institutionalized channel for its citizens to voice their

opinions if they feel that their elected representatives are not adequately representing them.

But no such system exists in our country. In fact , India is one of the five democracies in the

world which have never used this system

It has been nearly six decades since India took the decision to be a democratic power. Now

the time has come to analyze the pros and cons of our democratic system. Its not fair to just

blame the politicians as they have been elected by us only. The major problems with our

government today is the unethical power of money and muscle. Communalism and

corruption have destroyed the moral foundations on which our democracy has been

established. There was a time when corrupt people were looked at with disdain, but in the

modern society , the most respected people are the people with money. The present electoral

system has destroyed the moral, social and economic structure of our country.

Elections in India

India is divided into 28 States and seven union territories (Telangana has not become fully

operational yet ). Each state is governed by its own legislative assembly. Members of

legislative assembly and twelve members elected by the president together form the Rajya

Sabha. India is also divided into various regions on the basis of population which are known

as constituencies. One member from each of these constituencies form the Lok Sabha. Lok

Sabha and Rajya Sabha together make up the Parliament of India. The various aspects of each

citizen’s life like law, electricity, education, health etc are taken care by either legislative

assembly or the parliament. Each citizen of India has the right to cast two votes, one at the

time of general elections and another at the time of state elections. The elected members then

vote for deciding the President and Vice President of India. Election commission of India is

the autonomous body responsible for holding free and fair elections in India. This body

comprises of Chief election commissioner and two election commissioner appointed by the

President of India. Currently the Chief election commission of India is Shri V.S Sampath

2008 General Elections Statistics

According to the statistical report on the website of the election commission of India on the

general elections held in 2009, 363 parties participated in the general elections. Out of these

68 parties, 7 were national parties , 34 were state parties, 322 were registered (unrecognized)

and the remaining were independent candidates. There were total 543 constituencies out of

which 412 were categorized under general , 84 under scheduled castes and rest under

scheduled tribes. Total 8070 contestants were in fray with an average of nearly 14.86

contestants per constituencies. The maximum number of candidates were 43 from Chennai

South constituency and a minimum of 3 candidates were from Kokrajhar ,Assam. 7514 of

these contestants were male and 441 were female. The total number of registered male voters

was 37,47,58,801 and the number of registered female voters was 34,22,26,300. The total

number of valid votes were 41,70,37,606 and 58.19% of the registered voters participated in

the elections. The results of the assembly elections were in favour of Indian National

Congress parties with INC winning 206 of the 440 seats contested by them. Bhartiya Janta

Party were the other major party party capturing 116 of the 433 seats that were contested by

them. INC Continued with its United progressive alliance at the centre to form the

government. The current Prime minister of India is Shri Manmohan Singh . the next general

elections are scheduled in May 2014.

Issues and Challenges

One of the major issues before the election commission is the updating the election role.

Electoral role consists of the names of all the members of a constituency who are eligible to

vote in the assembly elections. The roll is updated each year to update it with the names of

people who have turned 18 and to strike out the names of people who have passed away.

Though in 1998, the historic decision was taken to computerize the list of 620 million

registered voters but the electoral roll is still far from efficient in coverage and correctness

and its fidelity is a major challenge for the election commission of India. It is no doubt that

the these election rolls have been the foundation for conducting many fair elections but for

any public document to be considered to be successful and efficient, it should be both

accessible and acceptable to the people. This is not the case with the Electoral roll and in

spite of the continuous efforts of the election commission; it still remains as a bone of

contention. The major challenges before the election commission is managing and updating

the electoral role is the sheer size of the number of registered voters, difference in

administrative patterns across the state, lack of awareness among voters, illiteracy, lack and

permanent machinery and numerous various other challenges.

Another major challenge before the election commission is the corruption that has slowly

sneaked in to our parliamentary systems starting from the elections. Financing of campaigns

above the legal limits, use of muscle power, booth capturing etc have become a major issue.

Most of the politicians have criminal cases pending against them and many of them are

involved in scandals, money laundering and other heinous acts.

Another major issue is the abuse of caste and religion for garnering votes. Most of the

electoral candidates are decided on basis of the minority and communal votes that they will

be able to gather. These candidates take advantage of the lack of awareness of the illiterate

voters and succeed in influencing them on basis of caste, community or religion.

In India, politics has become more of an investment ventures these days. Various committees

have been formed and recommendations have been made to reform the election system of

India. Some of the significant ones were Goswami Committee on Electoral refoms 1990,

Vohra Committee report 1993, Indrajit Gupta Committee on state funding of elections 1998

etc. . Electoral reforms are necessary to ensure free and fair elections in a democracy. India

needs these reforms to enhance the election system and improve its efficiency.

Election commission has been continuously working towards conducting free and fair

elections. It is not the lack of laws that is hampering the election process but rather its lenient

execution that has led to this state. Reform can’t be achieved in a day and it needs continuous

efforts of voters, electorates and the election commission of India

Survey on awareness of voters

A survey was conducted by TNS for Google India recently covering 108 contituencies