ELECTIONS IN INDIA

➢ WHAT ARE ELECTIONS

➢ TYPES OF ELECTIONS
➢ POLLING AND COUNTING OF VOTES
➢ WHY DO WE NEED ELECTIONS?
➢ ELECTORAL CONSTITUENCIES
➢ WHAT MAKES AN ELECTION DEMOCRATIC ?
➢ RESERVED CONSTITUENCIES
➢ VOTERS LIST
➢ NOMINATION OF CANDIDATES
➢ ELECTION CAMPAIGN
➢ CHALLENGES FACED DURING ELECTIONS
➢ PARTIES WHICH TAKE PART IN ELECTIONS IN 2024
➢ ELECTION COMMISSIONER OF INDIA
 WHAT ARE ELECTIONS
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population
chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative
democracy has operated since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the
legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local
government. This process is also used in many other private and business organization
from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations.
 TYPES OF ELECTIONS
There are 4 types of Elections that are being conducted in the Republic of India. These
include General Elections (Lok sabha), State Assembly Elections, Rajya sabha. Elections
(upper House) and Local Body Elections
General Elections (Lok sabha)
• Members of Lok Sabha (House of the People) or the lower house of India's
Parliament are elected directly by voting. The candidate is chosen from a set of
candidates who participate for elections in their respective constituencies.
• Every adult citizen of India can vote from their concerned constituency.
• Candidates who win the Lok Sabha elections are called 'Member of Parliament'
and hold their seats for five years or until the body is dissolved by the President
on the advice of the council of ministers.
• This election takes place once in 5 years to elect 543 members for the Parliament
(Lower house).
• A party needs 272 MPs to hold a claim to form the Central Government.
• Leader of the party/alliance takes oath as the Prime Minister.
State Assembly Elections
• Members of State Legislative Assemblies are elected directly by voting. These are
elected from a set of candidates who participate in their respective constituencies.
• Every adult citizen of India can vote from their concerned constituency.
• Candidates who win the State Legislative Assemblies Elections are called
'Member of Legislative Assembly'.
• The Elected Candidates hold their seats for five years or until the body is
dissolved by the Governor.
• Total strength of each assembly depends on each State, mostly based on size and
population.
• The leader of the majority party/alliance takes oath as Chief Minister of the State
Rajya Sabha Elections (Upper House)
• Candidates for Rajya Sabha (also known as the Council of States) or the upper
house of India's Parliament are not elected directly by the citizens.
• The members of Rajya Sabha are elected by those candidates who have already
won the Lok Sabha elections or who were nominated by the President of India at
his discretion.
• Each member of the Parliament in Rajya Sabha get a tenure of six years but one
third of the members change every two years.
• Rajya Sabha acts as a second level review body during the procedure of
converting a bill into an act.
• The Constitution of India however places some restrictions on the Rajya Sabha
which makes the Lok Sabha more powerful in certain areas.
Local Body Elections
• For Local Body Elections, representatives are directly elected by the concerned
people for a smaller geographical area.
• The different types of local bodies include Corporations, Municipalities,
Panchayats, etc.
 POLLING AND COUNTING OF
VOTES
• The final stage of an election is the day when the voters cast or ‘poll’ their vote. That day is
usually called the election day. Every person whose name is on the voters’ list can go to a
nearby ‘polling booth’, situated usually in a local school or a government office. Once the
voter goes inside the booth, the election officials identify her, put a mark on her finger and
allow her to cast her vote. An agent of each candidate is allowed to sit inside the polling
booth and ensure that the voting takes place in a fair way.
 WHY DO WE NEED ELECTIONS?
This requires a mechanism by which people can choose their representatives at regular intervals
and change them if they wish to do so. This mechanism is called election. Therefore, elections
are considered essential in our times for any representative democracy. In an election the
voters make many choices: They can choose who will make laws for them. They can choose
who will form the government and take major decisions.
• They can choose the party whose policies will guide the government and law making.
• They can choose who will form the government and take major decisions.
• They can choose the party whose policies will guide the government and law making.
 ELECTORAL CONSTITUENCIES

• For Lok Sabha elections, the country is divided into 543 constituencies. The representative
elected from each constituency is called a Member of Parliament or an MP. One of the
features of a democratic election is that every vote should have equal value. That is why
our Constitution requires that each constituency should have a roughly equal population
living within it. Similarly, each state is divided into a specific number of Assembly
constituencies. In this case, the elected representative is called the Member of
Legislative Assembly or an MLA. Each Parliamentary gulbarga (kalaburagi) district in
karnataka constituency has within it several assembly constituencies. The same principle
applies for Panchayat and Municipal elections. Each village or town is divided into
several ‘wards’ that are like constituencies. Each ward elects one member of the village
or the urban local body. Sometimes these constituencies are counted as ‘seats’, for each
constituency represents one seat in the assembly. When we say that ‘Lok Dal won 60
seats’ in Haryana, it means that candidates of Lok Dal won in 60 assembly constituencies
in the state and thus Lok Dal had 60 MLAs in the state assembly.
 VOTERS LIST
Once the constituencies are decided, the next step is to decide who can and who cannot vote.
This decision cannot be left to anyone till the last day. In a democratic election, the list of those
who are eligible to vote is prepared much before the election and given to everyone. This list is
officially called the Electoral Roll and is commonly known as the Voters’ List. This is an important
step for it is linked to the first condition of a democratic election: everyone should get an equal
opportunity to choose representatives
 WHAT MAKES AN ELECTION
DEMOCRATIC ?

A simple list of the minimum conditions of a democratic election:

• First, everyone should be able to choose. This means that everyone should have one
vote and every vote should have equal value .
• Second, there should be something to choose from . Parties and candidates should
be free to contest elections and should offer some real choice to the voters.
• Third, the choice should be offered at regular intervals. Elections must
be held regularly after every few years .
 RESERVED CONSTITUENCIES
• The makers of our Constitution thought of a special system of reserved constituencies for the
weaker sections. Some constituencies are reserved for people who belong to the Scheduled
Castes [SC] and Scheduled Tribes [ST]. In a SC reserved constituency only someone who
belongs to the Scheduled Castes can stand for election. Similarly only those belonging to the
Scheduled Tribes can contest an election from a constituency reserved for ST. Currently, in the
Lok Sabha, 84 seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes and 47 for the Scheduled Tribes (as
on 26 January 2019). This number is in proportion to their share in the total population. Thus the
reserved seats for SC and ST do not take away the legitimate share of any other social group.
This system of reservation was extended later to other weaker sections at the district and local
level. In many states, seats in rural (panchayat) and urban (municipalities and corporations)
local bodies are now reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBC) as well. However, the
proportion of seats reserved varies from state to state. Similarly, one-third of the seats are
reserved in rural and urban local bodies for women candidates.
 NOMINATION OF CANDIDATES
Recently, a new system of declaration has been introduced on direction from the Supreme
Court. Every candidate has to make a legal declaration, giving
full details of :
• Serious criminal cases pending against the candidate.
• Details of the assets and liabilities of the candidate and his or her family and educational
qualifications of the candidate. This information has to be made public. This provides an
opportunity to the voters to make their decision on the basis of the information provided by
the candidates.
 ELECTION CAMPAIGN
• In election campaigns, political parties try to focus public attention on some big issues. They
want to attract the public to that issue and get them to vote for their party on that basis. Let us
look at some of the successful slogans given by different political parties in various elections.
The Congress party led by Indira Gandhi gave the slogan of Garibi Hatao (Remove poverty) in
the Lok Sabha elections of 1971. The party promised to reorient all the policies of the
government to remove poverty from the country. < Save Democracy was the slogan given by
Janata Party under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, in the Lok Sabha election held in
1977. The party promised to undo the excesses committed during Emergency and restore civil
liberties. The Left Front used the slogan of Land to the Tiller in the West Bengal Assembly
elections held in 1977. ‘Protect the Self-Respect of the Telugus’ was the slogan used by N. T.
Rama Rao, the leader of the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections in
1983.
 CHALLENGES FACED DURING
ELECTIONS
The party that wins an election and forms government does so because people have
chosen it over its rivals. This may not be true for every constituency
• A few candidates may win purely on the basis of money power and unfair means. But
the overall verdict of a general election still reflects popular preference. There are very
few exceptions to this rule in the last 60 years in our country. This is what makes Indian
elections democratic
• Candidates and parties with a lot of money may not be sure of their victory but they do
enjoy a big and unfair advantage over smaller parties and independents .
• In some parts of the country, candidates with criminal connection have been able to
push others out of the electoral race and to secure a ‘ticket’ from major parties. Some
families tend to dominate political parties; tickets are distributed to relatives from these
families
• Very often elections offer little choice to ordinary citizens, for both the major parties are
quite similar to each other both in policies and practice. Smaller parties and
independent candidates suffer a huge disadvantage as compared to bigger parties.
These challenges exist not just in India but also in many established democracies
 PARTIES WHICH TAKE PART IN
ELECTIONS IN 2024
• More than 968 million voters had registered ahead of India’s 2024 general election, for which
voting was held in seven phases between April 19 and June 1. A record 642 million people
voted in this election, held to determine the majority party in the Lok Sabha (“House of the
People”), India’s lower house of parliament, and to constitute the 18th Lok Sabha. At the end
of the tabulation on June 4 and June 5, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with 240 seats,
fell short of the majority mark of 272 seats needed to win a clear majority even though the
National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP-led alliance, won enough votes to form the
government at the center. The 293 seats won by the NDA is shy of the 400 seats targeted by
Prime Minister Narendra Modi by a wide margin, but it paves the way for Modi to come to
power as the prime minister of India for a third consecutive term. The BJP will depend on
support from its allies as the Indian National Congress and its INDIA alliance made some
unexpected gains in these elections.
• According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), India has the largest electorate in the
world. The number of voters and election officers involved in this election is mind-boggling.
The ECI used about 15 million government employees and security personnel—who were
turned into election officials temporarily—to conduct the 2024 election. No voter should have
to travel more than 1.24 miles (2 km) to vote.
 ELECTION COMMISSIONER OF
INDIA
The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) is appointed by the President of India. But once
appointed, the Chief Election Commissioner is not answerable to the President or the
government. Even if the ruling party or the government does not like what the Commission does,
it is virtually impossible for it to remove the CEC. Very few election commissions in the world
have such wide-ranging powers as the Election Commission of India. EC takes decisions on
every aspect of conduct and control of elections from the announcement of elections to the
declaration of results. It implements the Code of Conduct and punishes any candidate or party
that violates it. During the election period, the EC can order the government to follow some
guidelines, to prevent use and misuse of governmental power to enhance its chances to win
elections, or to transfer some government officials. When on election duty, government officers
work under the control of the EC and not the government