Page 81 - Sst Class - IX

3. Electoral Politics
3. Electoral Politics

Memory Points
Memory Points
• Elections are a regular feature in any Democracy.
• Elections take place to choose people’s representatives.

• All democratic countries hold elections. But most non-democratic countries also hold some kind of
elections.
• At the constituency level, it takes the form of competition among several candidates.

• The Election Commission of India (ECI) deploys a sizeable number of election observers to ensure
the election campaign is carried out in a fair and impartial manner, and that voters can exercise their
franchise freely and without any undue influence.
• The Media are actively encouraged and provided with extensive facilities to cover the elections to
bring transparency in the electoral process while also adhering to maintaining the secrecy of the
vote.

List of the minimum conditions of a democratic election:

• Everyone should be able to choose. This means that everyone should have one vote and every vote
should have equal value.
• Parties and candidates should be free to contest elections and should offer some real choice to the
voters.

• Elections must be held regularly after every few years.
• The candidate preferred by the people should get elected without the involvement of any malpractices.

• Elections should be conducted in a free and fair manner where people can make their choices
according to their wish.
• Level playing field is a condition in which all parties and candidates contesting in an election have
equal opportunities to appeal for votes and to carry out election campaign.

• Fraud and malpractices indulged by a party or candidate to increase its votes is called Rigging.

Rigging includes:
• Stuffing ballot boxes by a few persons using the votes of others

• Recording multiple votes by the same person
• Bribing or coercing polling officers to favour a candidate

Election Process in India

The Election Process refers to a series of steps through which elections are conducted and representatives
are chosen by voters in a democratic system.

79