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: | |||
DOI: 10.64031/pratidhwanitheecho.vol.14.issue.03W. | ||||
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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