Democracy and free and fair elections go together and one cannot exist without the other. Free and fair elections can be ensured if the machinery which conducts the election is independent and the law under which the elections are conducted is faultless. The objective of any electoral reform needs to be the deepening of the democratic process, strengthening the instruments of public accountability and guaranteeing opportunity for meaningful voter participation. With large constituencies, multiplicity of parties and candidates, absence of ideology, politicization of caste and communal identities and building of vote banks, elections in India had become very expensive, thereby generating corruption and black money and leading to criminalization of politics. Inspire of concrete suggestions for electoral reforms the electoral system has not changed much. Electoral Reforms to make the democratic polity of India vibrant and resilient are too important to be left exclusively to government, political parties or the Election Commission.

By K. Raman Pillai; R. K. Suresh Kumar and P. Sukumaran Nair