Electoral Reforms in India : Comparative Analysis with U . S . A . &

The elections and political parties are necessary ingredients of democratic governance. Elections are a necessary condition of representative democracy. In representative democracy citizens participate in politics primarily by choosing political authorities in competitive elections. Elections, hence, are a necessary and crucial instrument to make democracy work. In India, free and fair elections are held at regular intervals as per guidelines of the constitution and the Election Commission. To make them free of flaws it is essential to reform them from time to time. Electoral reform means introducing fair electoral systems for conducting fair elections. It also rejuvenates the existing systems to enhance and increase the efficiency of the same. Following the demands of electoral reforms several committees were being set up. Some of the measures like reduction of voting age and antidefection law are appreciable but there are other vital areas in election field completely neglected.


Introduction
"An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle expect for the blood, a mud bath for every soul concerned in it." -George Bernard Shaw Electoral reforms are correctly understood to be a continuous process. It is change in electoral systems to improve how public desires are expressed in election results. No system of the election can ever be perfect. Any democratic society has to keep searching for the mechanism to Page no. 1 make elections free and fair to the maximum. One of the most important features of our democratic structure is elections which are held at regular intervals. Free and fair elections are indispensable for a healthy democracy. In India, the Government draws its authority from the "will of the people".
It is the citizens who have the sovereign power to elect the government and this government is responsible to the people who have elected them. But the citizens who elect the representatives have no right to "recall or reject the representative" on the ground that they are unsatisfactory for their post unlike Switzerland, pursuing a direct form of democracy. They have the right to recall a representative elected by them if they are not competent to hold their office. But no such system exists in our country.
In India, ruling party does not want to change electoral system unless they see an enormous disadvantage in the existing system. The present FPTP electoral system favors a small form of powerful caste based groups in India. FPTP is a misfit in a multicultural nation like India.
Governance in India will continue to remain in the hands of a few privileged classes of people as long as FPTP continues to be the electoral system in India. Power when not widely shared is bound to ferment at bottom which may lead to social and political upheaval in the country. This may force governments to take recourse to repressive laws as it is already being done in some parts of India.

Electoral reforms in India and challenges before the Election Commission
India is the largest democracy in the world. Since 1947, free and fair elections are held at regular intervals as per guidelines of the constitution and the Election Commission. The Election Commission is composed of high ranking government officials and is constituted according to the provisions of the Indian Constitution. Election Commission has autonomous power to exercise control over the election process. Even the judiciary has no right to intervene while the electoral process is on.
Some of the electoral reforms that have occupied the election process include Electronic Voting Machine which results in more transparency and credibility of elections, Inclusion of Universal Adult Franchise initiated by 61 st amendment in 1988 and anti -defection law which curtails the criminals from taking tickets of various political parties and also bestows on them the right to extract the contesting candidate's profile. Besides, Section 58A has been inserted in the Representative of the People's Act by Act 1 of 1989 providing for adjournment of pole or revoking of elections because of booth capturing.
Following the demands of electoral reforms several committees were being set up but it is difficult to say at what extent they have come up with output in the electoral reforms. In 1993 the Vohra Committee Report was prepared to take stock of all available information about the activities of mafia organizations which had developed links with and were being protected by government functionaries and political personalities. The major contribution of the report, in the context of electoral reforms, is the coining of the phrase "criminalization of politics and politicalization of criminal". It was the first time that the effect of crime, organized and unorganized, on the electoral process was officially recognized, though not made public.
One of the important documents on electoral reforms till date is 170 th report of the Law  While the government has made some of these changes from time to time but any major worthwhile changes have been consistently ignored.

Challenges before the Election Commission
The role of money and muscle power at elections; rapid criminalization of politics greatly encouraging the evils of booth capturing, violence; misuse of official machinery; increasing menace of participation of non-serious candidates form the core of our electoral problems.
The role of unaccounted money in elections has increased, which is taking outrageous form. Issues of politicians paying for news coverage and bribing voters were wide spread in 2009-2010 elections and even vote for note scam is one of the biggest examples of money power. As a result violence during elections has also increased. Though these activities does not take place very openly but are still in progress, there are many small towns where these activities takes place before and even after the elections and there is no one to oppose it.
"If we are going to spend a lot of money to deal with the problem of 200 million guns in the owned by 650 million gun owners, we ought to have a system which will work and catch criminals".
Criminalization in politics has weakened our electoral system. The representatives who stand for elections are stuffed with various criminal charges against them. In 2005 elections of Bihar, out of 385 candidates 213 were found to be alleged of non-bail able and cognizable offences.
Obscuring of the facts and criminal records acts an as an impediment to the fair election process. In

Proposed Electoral Reforms by the Election Commission of India
1. Criminalization of politics is an issue being raised by the commission from 1998 onwards.
Disqualification for criminal offences is provided in Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. As per that section, a person is disqualified from contesting election only on conviction by the court of law. The Commission had proposed that any person who is accused of an offence punishable by imprisonment for five years or more should be disqualified from contesting election even when trial is pending, provided charges have been framed against him by the competent court.
constituencies. There have been several cases where a person contests election from the two constituencies, and wins from both. In such a situation he/she vacates the seat in one of the two constituencies. The consequence is that bye-election is required for the vacated constituency involving expenditure and labour on the conduct of that bye-election. The Commission had proposed that law should be amended to provide that a person cannot contest from more than one constituency at a time.
6. The political parties must be required to publish their accounts (at least abridged version) annually for information and scrutiny of the general public and all concerned, for which purpose the maintenance of such accounts and their auditing to ensure their accuracy is a pre-requisite. College or nullifying its impact through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and improving Ballot access for third parties, among others.

The Commission had recommended in 1998 that
Elections represent an expression of the people's will (or the people's sovereignty) which is constitutionally conceptualized in both countries i.e. US & India as a unified foundation for the state's sovereign authority ("We, the People…"). And yet they also provide, at the very same time, a forum for the expression of the differing interests, parties and identities of the voters ("the people") who comprise the electorate.
As a result, competitive (and partisan) politics are conceptualized as essential to the operation of elections, and yet at the very same time potentially threatening to the unity of the people and the community. The ways that laws are thus deployed to both facilitate and contain competitive politics are central to comparison.
The election system that exists in U.S. is a product of late 19 th /early 20 th century partisan conflict, and of the ways the two major parties sought to control voting rules for mutual benefits.
Reflecting law regarding ballot access varied by state and region but they generally reflected a shared vision of two party politics as the key to stable politics. This had a profound effect on the development of the system of U.S. electoral law. In contrast with India the historical question in the development of American election law has been less the issue of how the law has regulated parties, than the issue of how parties have regulated the law. The organization of India's electoral management system had developed as a key aspect of nation-building after 1947, and was thus seen as a national instrument channeling India's tremendous diversity. In the U.S., on the other hand, elections had developed as a check on centralized power, which continued to shape the framing of electoral management and control.
In India, the power of the EC derives directly from the Indian constitution, but has been strengthened in recent decades by pronouncements by the courts. Critical is its power over the bureaucracy. Though the EC's permanent bureaucracy is relatively small, it has the legal right to command staff during the tenure of an election campaign (the dates for which it sets), and it commanded a total staff of almost 11 million, seconded from state and central governments, during the 2009 general election campaign. It also enforces its "Model Code of Conduct," which limits Comparative Analysis with U.K.
While U.K. uses the extremely disproportional FPTP majority system, India combines the British system with elements of consensus democracy. Out of 543 constituencies for Lok Sabha in  This has led to extensive amendment to the Representation of the People Act 1983, parts of which are now so complicated that they may challenge even electoral experts. It has also led to a voted 'No', with only 10 districts out of 440 voting in favor. In 2011, the Law Commission reviewed the electoral law of U.K. and recommended that it would be including a project on electoral law in the 11 th programme of law reform.