The erosion of credibility in the Election Commission of India has become a matter of grave concern for the country’s democracy, because among all democratic nations of the world, the reputation of our Election Commission has always been considered beyond any doubt. From time to time, official delegations from democratic countries around the world have come to study India’s election system. There is not just one reason behind this decline, but several — the biggest being that the Election Commission has been granted the status of an independent and autonomous institution under the Indian Constitution.
Our Constitution makers, with the intent to keep the electoral process pure and sacred, created such a system and gave the Election Commission certain quasi-judicial powers over political parties, so that it could compel every party to work within the constitutional framework. The Commission was also authorized to develop an electoral system that would be completely transparent and fair.
However, by the 1970s, many flaws began to appear in the electoral process, leading to growing demands for electoral reforms from political circles. This demand was effectively raised by Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), who made it one of the key issues of his people’s movement.
The student movement that began in Gujarat in 1973 reached Bihar in 1974 and transformed into a mass civil movement. At the request of the people, the late Jayaprakash Narayan, also known as JP, took its leadership. Under JP’s leadership, this movement was called the *Total Revolution* (*Samagra Kranti*), and JP demanded that to eradicate corruption from public life, the electoral system must first be fundamentally reformed.
Gradually, all major opposition parties of that time joined JP’s movement, including the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (which later became the BJP). The Jana Sangh leaders, upon joining the JP movement, reiterated their commitment to reforming the electoral system and admitted that the root of corruption lay in the highly expensive nature of elections.
During this period, one incident occurred — the Lok Sabha election for the Delhi Sadar seat was declared invalid. In the 1971 Lok Sabha elections, this seat had been won by Congress candidate Shri Amarnath Chawla, who had defeated Jana Sangh’s Kanwar Lal Gupta. The late Gupta challenged Chawla’s election in the Delhi High Court, arguing that Chawla had spent more money than the limit prescribed by the Election Commission. The court found this to be true and declared Chawla’s election invalid. At that time, the country’s Prime Minister was Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
Following this judgment, Mrs. Gandhi made an amendment to the Representation of the People Act, but it did not curb the rising cost of elections. The Indira government introduced a provision allowing any friend, well-wisher, or organization (including political parties) to spend any amount on behalf of a candidate, and such expenditure would not be counted as part of the candidate’s official election expenses. As a result, political parties effectively received a license to spend unlimited amounts during elections.
When JP made the issue of costly elections part of his movement, the *Amarnath Chawla vs. Kanwar Lal Gupta* case was a prominent example before him. JP believed that elections in India should be conducted at government expense so that political parties and candidates would not have to depend on wealthy industrialists to win. During his movement, he formed a committee under the leadership of retired Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Justice V.M. Tarkunde, and asked it to find ways to limit election expenses.
The Tarkunde Committee submitted its report to JP, recommending that a *Central Election Fund* be established to finance elections and that government resources should be made available to candidates for campaigning. This, the committee suggested, would make elections more transparent and affordable, and would enable any deserving citizen to contest. However, given India’s multi-party system, the number of candidates — particularly independents — could rise significantly, raising the question of how to restrict such proliferation.
Along with this, JP also proposed in his *Total Revolution* movement that voters should have the *right to recall* their elected representatives. JP believed that once elected for five years, representatives often became unaccountable to the people, so citizens should have the right to remove such representatives. The Tarkunde Committee did not endorse this particular idea, but it did recommend the adoption of *proportional representation* similar to that in Germany. Under such a system, political parties would send representatives to legislatures and Parliament in proportion to the percentage of votes they received.
While the movement was ongoing, came the day of June 12, 1975 — when the Allahabad High Court Chief Justice, the late Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha, declared the election of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from the Rae Bareli constituency invalid. Subsequently, on June 25, 1975, a nationwide Emergency was declared.
When the Emergency was lifted 21 months later, the political tide had turned. The opposition came to power, with the late Morarji Desai as Prime Minister. When the Tarkunde Committee’s report reached Morarji Desai, he established an Electoral Reforms Commission under the chairmanship of former Chief Election Commissioner P.L. Shakdher. However, Morarji Desai’s government did not last its full term of two years and fell. The late Chaudhary Charan Singh then became Prime Minister, but before he could prove his majority in Parliament, his government too lost support, and fresh Lok Sabha elections were held in 1980.
In those elections, Indira Gandhi returned to power with great fanfare, rendering the Shakdher Commission report irrelevant. Later, under Congress rule, the Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms was formed. Though it did not touch upon the financial aspect of elections, it made several significant recommendations, some of which were implemented.
However, today, it is the credibility of the Election Commission itself that has come under suspicion. Instead of genuine electoral reforms, the focus has shifted to the “purification” of voter lists. This also implies that voters themselves are now under the Election Commission’s scrutiny.
Moreover, the way governments distribute welfare “freebies” before elections has deeply corrupted the electoral system. The Election Commission remains a silent spectator in such matters, as every government — regardless of party — introduces such schemes shortly before elections to lure voters. This new method of tempting voters has turned into a competition among political parties themselves.
Sadly, we began our journey by demanding *electoral reforms*, but have ended up in the era of *electoral freebies*. Such practices are not strengthening our democracy, because they treat voters as supplicants — whereas in reality, the voter is the true sovereign of democracy.
