India is a constitutional democracy with a parliamentary system of
government, and at the heart of the system is a commitment to hold
regular, free and fair elections. These elections determine the
composition of the government, the membership of the two houses of
parliament, the state and union territory legislative assemblies, and
the Presidency and vice-presidency.
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Elections in India are events involving political mobilisation and
organisational complexity on an amazing scale. In the 1996 election to
Lok Sabha there were 1,269 candidates from 38 officially recognised
national and state parties seeking election, 1,048 candidates from
registered parties, not recognised and 10,635 independent candidates. A
total number of 59,25,72,288 people voted. The Election Commission
employed almost 40,00,000 people to run the election. A vast number if
civilian police and security forces were deployed to ensure that the
elections were carried out peacefully. The direct cost of organising the
election amounted to approximately Rs. 5,180 million.
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The country has been divided into 543 Parliamentary Constituencies,
each of which returns one MP to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the
Parliament. The size and shape of the parliamentary constituencies are
determined by an independent Delimitation Commission, which aims to
create constituencies which have roughly the same population, subject to
geographical considerations and the boundaries of the states and
administrative areas.
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Delimitation is the redrawing of the boundaries of parliamentary or
assembly constituencies to make sure that there are, as near as
practicable, the same number of people in each constituency. In India
boundaries are meant to be examined after the ten-yearly census to
reflect changes in population, for which Parliament by law establishes
an independent Delimitation Commission, made up of the Chief Election
Commissioner and two judges or ex-judges from the Supreme Court or High
Court. However, under a constitutional amendment of 1976, delimitation
was suspended until after the census of 2001, ostensibly so that states’
family-planning programmes would not affect their political
representation in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabhas. This has led to wide
discrepancies in the size of constituencies, with the largest having
over 25,00,000 electors, and the smallest less than 50,000.
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