Electorate, Constituency, Representation in India

Submitted to:

Ms. V. Sreemathy

Submitted by:

Sarthak Singh BALLB-B

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Heart full thanks to the following people….

I express my sincere and deep sense of gratitude to my esteemed guide Ms. V. Sreemathy

lecturer in LAW Dep’t., CHRIST ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF LAW, BENGALURU for his continued
support and supervision. I am highly obliged to him for providing me the opportunity to
work under his guidance. It was his scholarly suggestions, immense interest and moral
support that helped in competing the work confidently and successfully.

I would also place on record my gratitude to all teachers of CHRIST ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF
LAW, BENGALURU for their constant encouragement.

(SARTHAK SINGH)
 Table of content

 Introduction

1. The Functions (Electoral System of India)

2. Constituency
3. Political Representation in India

 Body

1. Constituencies & reservation of seats

2. How the constituency boundaries are drawn up
3. Reservation of seats
4. System of election
5. Parliament
6. Rajya Sabha - the council of states
7. Lok Sabha - house of the people
8. State legislatures
9. President and vice-president
10. Independent election commission
11. Who can vote?
12. The electoral roll
13. Computerisation of rolls
14. Constituency work
15. Voting without constituencies

16. Political representation

17. The mandate–independence debate

18. Descriptive and substantive representation

 Conclusion

1. Critics of Democratic Representation

2. Electoral Systems and Political Representation

 Bibliography
Introduction

The Functions (Electoral System of India)

India is a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic. Democracy runs like a golden
thread in the social, economic and political fabric woven by the Constitution given by ‘We,
the People of India’ unto ourselves. The concept of democracy as visualised by the
Constitution pre-supposes the representation of the people in Parliament and State
legislatures by the method of election. The Supreme Court has held that democracy is one of
the inalienable basic features of the Constitution of India and forms part of its basic structure.
The Constitution of India adopted a Parliamentary form of government. Parliament consists
of the President of India and the two Houses — Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. India, being a
Union of states, has separate state legislatures for each state. State legislatures consist of the
Governor and two Houses — Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly — in seven
states, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka,
Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and of the Governor and the state Legislative Assembly in
the remaining 22 states. Apart from the above, two out of the seven Union Territories,
namely, National Capital Territory of Delhi and Puducherry, also have their Legislative
Assemblies.

Constituency

Constituency, basic electoral unit into which eligible electors are organized to elect
representatives to a legislative or other public body. The registration of electors is also
usually undertaken within the bounds of the constituency.

Constituencies vary in size and in the number of representatives elected by them. In size they
may number a few thousand or be as large as the country itself. Constituencies may be
represented by one or by several representatives, depending on the type of electoral system
employed. All constituencies within a state should, ideally, be equal in population. To
achieve this as nearly as possible, periodic alterations of boundaries are made. Constituencies
are most often formed on a geographical basis, but the basis could also be occupational (for
example, the university constituencies that once existed in the United Kingdom).

Political Representation in India

India is a parliamentary democracy with single-member districts, where the national gov-
ernment is formed by the party, or coalition of parties, with the most elected representatives.
Voters vote for local representatives, and if the representative is a member of the governing
coalition, then the constituency is represented more directly in government. Coupling our
instrumental variables strategy with this feature lets us estimate the effect of independents on
constituency representation in government. We show that a standard deviation increase in the
number of independents increases voter turnout by 5-6 percentage points, increases the total
vote share for independents by 9-10percentage points, and reduces the vote share of the
winner by about 5 percentage points. Independents thus induce some voters to vote rather
than stay home, some to switch whom they vote for, and allow the winning candidate to win
with support from a smaller segment of the electorate, ultimately suggesting that
independents could affect the outcome of the election. We show independents in fact
decrease the probability of electing a governing-coalition representative by 27-30 percentage
points. This finding implies that the price of participation by independents is constituency
representation in government.

Body

CONSTITUENCIES & RESERVATION OF SEATS

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 Federal Democratic
Republic of India has thirty six constituent units. All the twenty nine States and two of the
seven Union Territories have their own assemblies - Vidhan Sabha. The thirty one
Assemblies have 4120 Constituencies.

HOW THE CONSTITUENCY BOUNDARIES ARE DRAWN UP

Delimitation is the redrawing of the boundaries of parliamentary or assembly constituencies

to make sure that there are, as nearly as practicable, the same number of people in each
constituency. Boundaries are meant to be readjusted 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, so that states' family-planning
programmes would not affect their political representation in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan
Sabhas. This led to a few discrepancies in the size of constituencies. 

The rationale underlying such embargo was that some of the states which were implementing
the population control measures more vigorously felt that they might lose some
representation in the Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies on the basis of 1981 and
1991 population figures vis-à-vis those states which were not so effective in population
control. However, the above embargo, with the passage of time, resulted in wide disparities in
the electorates of almost all Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies, affecting the
principle of ‘one man, one vote, one value’. Therefore, by a further amendment to the
Constitution by 84th amendment in 2001, Parliament found a via media. It was provided that
the territorial extent of all Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies may be re-adjusted on
the basis of the 1991 census, but the allocation of seats to the states in the Lok Sabha and the
total number of seats in the state Legislative Assemblies shall remain unchanged until the
first census to be undertaken after the year 2026, so as to protect the interests of the
aforementioned states controlling the population more effectively. By another subsequent
87th amendment to the Constitution in 2003, Parliament decided that the extent of
Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies may be readjusted on the basis of the 2001
census instead of the 1991 census. The reservation of seats for the scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes in the said Houses was also decided to be readjusted on the basis of the 2001
census. Pursuant to the above constitutional amendments, a three member Delimitation
Commission headed by Justice Kuldip Singh, a retired Judge of the Supreme Court, was set
up in July 2002 under the provisions of the Delimitation Act, 2002. The Chief Election
Commissioner or one of the Election Commissioners nominated by the former was one of the
members of the Delimitation Commission. The Delimitation Commission re-adjusted the
territorial extent of Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies in all states (except the states
of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, where the delimitation process was
deferred by an amendment to the Delimitation Act in 2008). By the same amendment to the
said Act in 2008, the Delimitation Order made by the Delimitation Commission in relation
the state of Jharkhand was also rendered inoperative. (The Delimitation Act 2002 was not
extended to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and, consequently, there was no delimitation of
constituencies in that state on the basis of the 2001 census). All the orders passed by the
Delimitation Commission were made effective, by a Presidential order under Articles 82 and
170, from February 19, 2008 in all states, except the states of Meghalaya and Tripura, where
these orders were made effective from March 20, 2008. Accordingly, all elections held after
February 19, 2008 to the Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies, including the last
General Election to the Lok Sabha in 2009, have been held on the basis of the Parliamentary
and Assembly constituencies as re-adjusted by the Delimitation Commission on the basis of
the 2001 census.

RESERVATION OF SEATS

The Constitution puts a limit on the size of the Lok Sabha at 550 elected members, apart from
two members who can be nominated by the President to represent the Anglo-Indian
community. There are also provisions to ensure the representation of scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes with reserved constituencies, where only candidates from these communities
can stand for election. A legislation to reserve one third of the seats reserved for female
candidates was introduced in the Lok Sabha in early 1999. Before the bill could be
considered and passed by the Parliament, the Lower House was dissolved.
SYSTEM OF ELECTION

Elections to the Lok Sabha and each Vidhan Sabha are carried out using a first-past-the-post
electoral system. For each constituency, the electors can cast their vote for a single candidate
(of their choice), the winner being the candidate who gets the most votes.

PARLIAMENT

The Parliament of the Union consists of the President, the Lok Sabha (House of the People)
and the Rajya Sabha (The Council of States).

RAJYA SABHA - THE COUNCIL OF STATES

The members of the Rajya Sabha are elected indirectly, rather than by the citizens at large.
Rajya Sabha members are elected by each state Vidhan Sabha using the single transferable
vote system. Unlike most federal systems, the number of members returned by each state is
roughly in proportion to their population. At present, there are 233 members of the Rajya
Sabha elected by the Vidhan Sabhas, and there are also twelve members nominated by the
President from amongst eminent personalities in the field of literature, science, art and social
services. Rajya Sabha members can serve for six years, and elections are staggered, with one
third of the council being elected every 2 years.

LOK SABHA - HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE

The President of India is the head of the state appoints the Prime Minister, to had the council
of Ministers, which runs the government, according to the political composition of the Lok
Sabha. Although the government is headed by a Prime Minister, the Cabinet is the central
decision making body of the government. Members of more than one party can make up a
government, and although the governing parties may be a minority in Lok Sabha, they can
only govern as long as they have the confidence of a majority of MPs, the members of the
Lok Sabha. The Lok Sabha is the main legislative body, along with the Rajya Sabha. The
members of Lok Sabha elected directly by the adult citizens of India from single member
territorial Parliamentary Constituencies under the first past,- the – posts’ system. At present
there are 543 direct elected members of Lok Sabha apart from two members nominated by
the President to represent Anglo Indian Community.

  
STATE LEGISLATURES

India is a federal country, and the Constitution gives the States and Union Territories
significant control over their own government. The Vidhan Sabhas (legislative assemblies)
are directly elected bodies set up to carry out the administration of the government in the 29
states of India. In some states, there is a bicameral organisation of legislatures, with both an
Upper and Lower House. Two of the seven Union Territories viz., the National Capital
Territory of Delhi and Pondicherry, have also legislative assemblies. The assemblies range in
size, according to population. The largest Vidhan Sabha is for Uttar Pradesh, with 403
members; the smallest for Puducherry, with 30 members. Elections to the Rajya Sabha, the
Upper House of the Parliament, Vidhan Pahshads, Upper Houses of the State Legislatures
(existing only in a few states) and offices of the President and Vice-President are, however,
conducted on the basis of proportional representation through a single transferable vote
system.

PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT

The President is elected by the elected members of the Vidhan Sabhas, Lok Sabha, and Rajya
Sabha and serves for a period of 5 years. A formula, linked to the population of state,
determines the value of vote for each elected member of Parliament- both of the Lok Sabha
and the Rajya Sabha and is determined by a formula linked to the total value of votes of all
the members of all the legislative assemblies. If no candidate receives a majority of votes,
there is a system by which losing candidates are eliminated from the contest and votes for
them transferred to other candidates, until one gains a majority. The Vice-President is elected
by a direct vote of all members, elected and nominated, of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. A
successful candidate for the office of the President or the Vice-President is eligible for re-
election. 

INDEPENDENT ELECTION COMMISSION

The Election Commission of India is an independent Constitutional Authority since 25th

January, 1950. The Constitution provides for Chief Election Commissioner and one or more
Election Commissioners to be appointed. The Commission consisted of Chief Election
Commissioner till 1989, when for the first time two Election Commissioners were appointed.
Currently, the Commission has a Chief Election Commissioner and two Commissioners.
Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners enjoy the status of a Judge of
the Supreme Court of India. The Chief Election Commissioner can be removed from office
only by Parliamentary impeachment. The Election Commission is responsible for the conduct
of elections to parliament and state legislatures and to the offices of the President and Vice-
President. The Election Commission prepares, maintains and periodically updates the
Electoral Rolls, which show who is entitled to vote, supervises the nomination of candidates,
registers political parties, monitors the election campaign, including the funding and
exponential by candidates. It also facilitates the coverage of the election process by the
media, organises the polling booths where voting takes place, and looks after the counting of
votes and the declaration of results. All this is done to ensure that elections can take place in
an orderly and fair manner. The Commission decides most matters by consensus but in case
of any dissension, the majority view prevails. The Commission has its headquarters in New
Delhi, with a Secretariat of some 350 staff members. At the state level, a Chief Electoral
Officer with a core staff of varying numbers, is available on a full time basis. At the district
and constituency level, officers and staff of the civil administration double up as election
officials. During actual conduct of elections, a vast number of additional staff are temporarily
drafted for about two weeks. They function mainly as polling and counting officials.

WHO CAN VOTE?

The democratic system in India is based on the principle of universal adult suffrage; that any
citizen over the age of 18 can vote in an election (before 1989 the age limit was 21). The right
to vote is irrespective of caste, creed, religion or gender. Those who are deemed unsound of
mind, and people convicted of certain criminal offences are not allowed to vote. There has
been a general increase in the number of people voting in Indian election. In 1996, 57.4% of
the electorate voted. This increased to 66 % in the General Election held in 2014. Women
voted in good numbers and almost in equal proportion as men.

THE ELECTORAL ROLL

The electoral roll of a constituency is a list of all those people in that constituency who are
registered to vote in the elections. Only those people whose names are there in the electoral
rolls are allowed to vote as ‘electors’. The electoral roll is normally revised every year to add
the names of those who are not less than 18 on a qualifying date years as on the first day of
January of that year, or have moved into the constituency, and to remove the names of those
who have died or moved out of the constituency. The updating of electoral rolls is a
continuous process, which is interrupted only at the time of the elections during the period
from after the last date of filing nominations till the completion of the elections. The
administrative machinery involved in the preparation, maintenance and revision of the
electoral rolls has the ECI at the top of the hierarchy. According to Section 13B of the
Representation of the People Act, 1950, the electoral roll for each constituency in a State/UT
is to be prepared and revised by an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). At the bottom of the
hierarchy, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and supervisors are also appointed. Each BLO has
one or two polling stations under his/her jurisdiction. During the revision of the electoral
rolls, BLOs may be assigned the tasks of enumeration, the verification of rolls and forms, and
the collection of forms and photographs from the electors for Electoral Photo Identity Card
(EPIC) and photo roll maximisation. BLOs hand over the forms thus collected to the
designated officers and EROs for further action. During the time when continuous revision
and updating is going on, BLOs may be used for the identification of dead and shifted voters
on specified dates prescribed for the purpose by the ECI (one week in each half of a year). In
an election year, a BLO’s task begins with the publication of the draft rolls till the completion
of the second Supplement according to a specific programme approved by the ECI.
Supervisory officers maintain checks on the quality of work done by the BLOs, and closely
monitor it. Each Supervisory Officer has 10-20 BLOs under his/her supervision. Apart from
the machinery involved in the process of the preparation and revision of the electoral rolls,
community participation has also been identified as one of the ways in which political parties
can appoint their representatives as Booth Level Agents (BLAs) on the pattern of
appointment of Polling Agents, to complement the task of BLOs. Normally, one BLA may be
appointed for each part of the electoral roll. The BLA must be a registered elector in the
relevant part of the electoral roll for which he/she is appointed, as it is expected that the BLA
will scrutinise the entries in the draft roll of the area where he/she resides, in order to identify
the entries of dead persons and shifted persons.

COMPUTERISATION OF ROLLS

The Election Commission has undertaken the computerisation of all electoral rolls throughout
India, which has lead to improvements in the accuracy and speed with which the electoral roll
can be updated.

CONSTITUENCY WORK

Elected representatives may spend much of the time serving the needs or demands of
individual constituents, meaning either voters or residents of their district. This is more
common in assemblies with many single-member or small districts than those with fewer,
larger districts. In a looser sense, corporations and other such organizations can be referred to
as constituents, if they have a significant presence in an area.

Many assemblies allow free postage (through franking privilege or prepaid envelopes) from a
representative to a constituent, and often free telecommunications. Caseworkers may be
employed by representatives to assist constituents with problems. Members of the U.S.
Congress (both Representatives and Senators) working in Washington, D.C. have a
governmentally staffed district office to aid in constituent services. Many state legislatures
have followed suit. Likewise, British MPs use their Parliamentary staffing allowance to
appoint staff for constituency casework. Client politics and pork barrel politics are associated
with constituency work.
Special constituencies with additional membership requirements

In some elected assemblies, some or all constituencies may group voters based on some
criterion other than, or in addition to, the location they live.

VOTING WITHOUT CONSTITUENCIES

Not all democratic political systems use separate districts or other electoral subdivisions to
conduct elections. Israel, for instance, conducts parliamentary elections as a single district.
While the 26 electoral districts in Italy and the 20 in the Netherlands have a role in the actual
election, but no role whatsoever in the division of the seats. Ukraine elected half of
the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) in this way in the elections in October 2012.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Nearly 40 years ago, political theorist Hannah Pitkin argued that only a constellation of
meanings could ad-equinely describe representation, and political representation in particular.
The concept is so complex because representation is an apparent absurdity: to make present
something that is not literally present. This would difficult enough if the ‘something’ in
question was a simple object in the world, but an act of political representation more typically
calls the something into being. In other words, an election or the formation of a legislature
constitutes the ‘object’ being represented, for example, the people, the will of the people, the
nation, the national interest, etc. At the same time, political representation (at least in
functioning democracies) must also be a practical activity providing the means of gov-
enhance. The relationships among representation and geography involve both the constitutive
and the practical dimensions of representation. All democratic political representation relies
on akin of political fiction, the existence of ‘the people’ as a sovereign-holding, but abstract
entity. That is, the people hold power, but it is never possible to actually identify a particular
set of the population as the people. Indeed, every less-than-unanimous vote reveals the
fictitious nature of the people because any resulting representative or policy will have the
support of (at best) a majority of voters. Democratic political representation presents a
particular dilemma because the people are simul-timeously rulers and subjects. As rulers,
they are free toast according to their political will, but as subjects, they are bound by their
own decisions. Political representation, and its practice in electoral systems, resolves this
dilemma by delegating power to representatives who carry out the activities of governance.
These representatives are typically restrained by constitutional provisions and previously
established laws – as well as by future elections. The creative or constitutive nature of
political representation means that all systems of political represent-tation have both actual
and imaginary geographies. That is, geographical studies of political representation involve
issues such as voting patterns and the division of state powers, but also issues such as the
right to vote, a question that fundamentally defines the nature of testate or nation. Issues of
political representation have attracted in-creasing interest in political and electoral geography
in the last 20 years. The roots of this renewed interest lie unhistorical, technical, and
disciplinary developments. First, the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe(1989–
90), the breakup of the Soviet Union (1991), and the end of apartheid in South Africa (1991–
94) led to a renewed ‘wave’ of democratization that often required careful negotiation over
both the institutional forms of electoral systems and the nature of the political com-munities
to be represented. Second, the increased powerband sophistication of geographic information
systems(GISs) have brought new analytic power to the practice of political districting and the
analysis of voting patterns. Finally, electoral geography is also moving beyond the analysis of
spatial patterns of voting, instead focusing more on place-specific or ‘neighbourhood’ effects
on voting preferences. These developments mean that political geography in general, and
electoral geography in particular, has had to re-examine its assumptions about political
representation and related concepts.

THE MANDATE–INDEPENDENCE DEBATE

Debate over the role of the representative, the so-called mandate–independence debate, is one
of the central issues in political representation. Under the mandate theory, a representative
must always act in accordance with the will of her/his constituents, and indeed, ceases to
represent them if s/he goes against their wishes. Strictly speaking, the mandate theory holds
that a representative is simply a delegate, acting as a conduit to convey the actions and
interests of voters to an assembly. In contrast, the independence theory characterizes the
representative as free to act according to her/his own judgment and will, recognizing
representatives as having unique skills and expertise unavailable to a typical constituent. This
perspective would recognize a person as a representative even if s/he acts contrary to the
expressed wishes of the constituency. The common meaning of democratic political
representation lies somewhere between these two extremes, and relies on a reciprocal
relationship between the represented and the representative.

Pitkin in particular argues that a proper understanding of political representation requires

elements of both theories. The represented must be seen as capable of understanding and
expressing their own interests, rather than simply being the subjects of caretaking (like
children or the mentally infirm). There should not typically be conflict between the wishes of
constituents and the actions of the representative, but such divergence must be possible.
When differences arise, the representative must be able to explain and justify them.
Democratic states institutionalize this reciprocal relationship through periodic elections,
where voters can (in principle) replace inadequate representatives.
DESCRIPTIVE AND SUBSTANTIVE REPRESENTATION

Another major debate involves the relationship between the identity of the representative and
the composition of her/his constituency. Political theorists typically characterize this as a
conflict between descriptive and substantive representation, sometimes described as the
politics of presence versus the politics of interests or ideas. (Such discussions occur most
often in the context of gender, racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, but are not necessarily
limited to the role of such groups.) Descriptive representation or the politics of presence
requires the physical presence of women, ethnic minorities, etc. in a representative assembly.
In a sense, a body is representative when groups are present in the significant inequality and
stratification. More sophisticated defences of descriptive representation suggest that the
presence of women and minorities actually changes the quality and nature of deliberation in
legislative bodies. A number of representative democracies, such as India, have
institutionalized the politics of presence by instituting quotas for women and minority groups
in legislative bodies. The US also imposed gender quotas for elections in Iraq, although it
eschews them at home.

Conclusion

Critics of Democratic Representation

Marxist critics in particular argue that such theoretical debates are irrelevant because
‘democratic representation’ is impossible under a capitalist system. The interests of capital
too easily determine elections, and debates between parties and candidates simply serve to
disguise how the state acts in the interests of capital. The idea of candidates and parties
competing with each other is simply a political version of free-market economic ideology.
For these critics, structural forces rather than individual merit or effort determine the winners
and losers in each realm. Insofar as political debate takes place through the media, major
corporations can easily control the content and structure of political discussion and identify
only favorable candidates as legitimate and ‘serious’. Similarly, the funding required for
political campaigns means that wealthy individuals and organizations exercise a
disproportionate impact on elections. Moreover, elections themselves may be largely
irrelevant because those with the most influence over representatives – lobbyists, institutions,
corporations, and so forth – are not affected by elections. The interests of capital are
represented regardless of the form of ‘democratic representation’.

Electoral Systems and Political Representation

Disputes over political representation generally take place in conflicts over electoral systems,
rather than in abstract policy debates. An electoral system is the mechanism through which
votes are translated (or not) into political power. Within liberal democracies an enormous
variety of electoral systems exist in pure or mixed forms, although most are variations of
either proportional representation (PR) or territorial-plurality representation. Each system
translates votes into power in slightly different ways. Each offers particular trade-offs in the
relationship between representatives and constituents, and in the stability and responsiveness
of the political system. The choice of an electoral system reflects the institutionalized
political values of a society – or at least the values of those in a position to choose the system.

Bibliography