Introduction

Democracy is a system of government where the whole population or eligible citizen vote for their representatives and consequently forming a government for the people, by the people. India is the largest republic and democratic country in the world. India can be fairly called the leading epitome of Democracy. In democratic countries, people choose their representatives through the election, but the election needs to be held transparent, fair and impartially. For these purposes, the Indian constitute provides an Election Commission with autonomous (Art 324-329) involving a Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners.

Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), States that:

“Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

The most important function of the Election Commission is to ensure that the elections should be conducted fairly and impartial, every person gets a fair chance for the vote. Therefore in the recent past, several new initiatives have been taken. The human error can be eliminated by making the whole electoral system into a standard tamper-proof computerized system, which will neglect the chances of error made by human involvement. Checking criminalization of politics, providing electors with Identity Cards, scheme for use of State-owned Electronic Media for broadcast/telecast by political parties and a variety of measures for strict submission of Model Code of Conduct, during election providing a level playing field to contestants, appointing BLOs (Booth Level Officers) and Voters’ awareness programmes, EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) Webcasting, etc. are some work conducted by Election Commission.

The growth of Electoral System of India

After Independence in August 1947, on the basis of universal adult suffrage, there is a need to hold a general election to elect truly representative Government. From November 26th, 1949, an independent constitutional body Election Commission was brought into force which was provided by Article 324. Whereas, most of the other provisions were made effective from January 26th, 1950 (when the Constitution of India became effective). January 25th, 1950, a day before India became a Sovereign Democratic Republic Election Commission was formally constituted.