NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 5 Chapter opening — The Big Questions

Universal adult franchise means that every adult citizen gets one vote, and all votes have equal value. In India that means every citizen aged 18 and above has the right to vote — irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion, gender, education, income, and so on. The word ‘universal’ carries exactly this: no group of adults is left out.

Take the three words separately, because each one is doing work:

Two practical conditions come with the right. First, you must be registered as a voter in your constituency to exercise it. Second, a person found guilty of committing certain serious crimes is barred from voting. And one rule protects it: no one can vote on another’s behalf.

An electoral system is the whole arrangement by which citizens choose their representatives — the rules, the institutions and the people who run them, working together. The chapter’s own margin note defines a system as “a group of interconnected or interdependent elements that work together to achieve a common purpose or function”, and an electoral system is exactly that: many parts whose common purpose is a free and fair election.

Read the chapter and you can list the parts:

• Rules — universal adult franchise (Article 326), the secret ballot, ‘First-Past-the-Post’ counting, the reservation of seats, the Model Code of Conduct.
• Institutions — the Election Commission of India, and the State Election Commissions for local bodies.
• Machinery on the ground — the voter list, constituencies, polling stations, polling officers, EVMs and VVPATs, indelible ink, counting halls.
• Participants — voters, candidates and political parties, all bound by the same rules.

It works at three levels, and it works differently for direct and indirect elections. Here is the whole chapter in one view.

1. Who runs it. The Election Commission of India (ECI) — an independent constitutional body set up in 1950. Its structure descends from the national level to the polling booth:

2. Direct elections — Lok Sabha and the state assemblies. The country is divided into 543 constituencies for the Lok Sabha. Every registered voter in a constituency casts one secret vote; India uses ‘First-Past-the-Post’, so the candidate with the most votes wins even without 50 per cent. Winners are called MPs (Lok Sabha) and MLAs (state assemblies). The party or coalition with a majority of seats forms the government, and its leader becomes prime minister — or chief minister in a state.

3. On polling day the voter passes four steps: the 1st polling officer checks the name on the voter list and the ID proof; the 2nd inks the finger, gives a chit and takes the signature; the 3rd takes the chit and checks the finger (NOTA is available); then the voter presses the button on the EVM, hears a beep, and checks the printed slip in the VVPAT.

4. Indirect elections. The Rajya Sabha, the President and the Vice President are not elected by the general public. Of the Rajya Sabha’s 245 members, 233 are elected by the elected MLAs and 12 nominated by the President. The President is elected by an electoral college of MPs of both Houses plus MLAs of the states and of Delhi and Puducherry. All of these use the single transferable vote system.