Abhisek Khan
Volume-XIV, Issue-III, April 2026
Volume-XIV, Issue-III, April 2026 | ||
Received: 25.04.2026 | Accepted: 27.04.2026 | |||
Published Online: 30.04.2026 | Page No: 272-280 | |||
DOI: 10.64031/pratidhwanitheecho.vol.14.issue.03W.106 | ||||
Electoral Reforms in India: Challenges, Trajectories, And Democratic Deepening Abhisek Khan, Research Scholar, Department of Political Science, Bankura University, Bankura, West Bengal, India | |
However, even though India remains the largest democracy in the world, it does not necessarily mean that India has the electoral process that would be entirely free from structural distortions. For more than seven decades since the country gained its independence, India has achieved remarkable success in electoral reforms: implementation of the Electronic Voting Machine system, declaration of criminal history, the Lily Thomas case which denied convicted members of the legislature the right to delay their conviction, and the Supreme Court verdict in 2024, which ruled that the Electoral Bonds scheme was unconstitutional. However, during the same period, the share of parliamentarians with criminal backgrounds reached 46%, spending on elections reached an estimate of one lakh crore rupees, and the issue of Electronic Voting Machine transparency has resurfaced with new force in disputed state elections. This article aims to analyse the history of electoral reforms in India under the following categories: institutional process, institutional structural problems, and institutional future directions. Utilising insights from Law Commission reports, jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, Association for Democratic Reforms database, and examples from other countries, the article concludes that India's reforms in electoral laws were largely reactive, and did not anticipate crises but rather dealt with them when political conditions became untenable. Among issues to be solved in the area of electoral laws are: criminalisation of politics, opacity in funding of parties, lack of voting rights for internal migrants, and issues regarding the EVM-VVPAT verification problem. All four reform items constitute the agenda that is urgent but hindered by the very nature of institutional structure: people in charge of enacting reforms are themselves beneficiaries of them. | |
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