Election and Representation

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Political Science Class XI (Indian Constitution at Work), Chapter 3.

Can 48% of the votes give a party 76% of the seats?

In the 1984 Lok Sabha election one party polled 48% of the votes and won 415 of the 543 seats. Another polled 7.4% and won 2. Nobody cheated and nothing went wrong. The arithmetic came from the rule used to count votes. This chapter is about those rules: how a country of crores of voters picks its representatives, which counting method India chose, and who makes sure the contest is fair.

Why the rules of voting sit inside the Constitution

You cannot vote on every law yourself. In a country with more than 90 crore voters, a direct democracy (where everyone decides everything, as in a village gram sabha or the assemblies of ancient Athens) is not workable beyond small groups. So we elect representatives, and the system becomes a representative democracy.

That makes the election rules the most important rules in the system, because whoever controls them controls who gets power. If an ordinary law could change them, a government could alter voting eligibility, the counting method or the supervising authority just before polling to suit itself. So the Constitution fixes the basics: who may vote, who may contest, who supervises, and how votes become seats. Details such as the day-to-day arrangements are left to ordinary law.

Two ways to count: FPTP and PR

Every system must answer one question: how do votes become seats? There are two main answers.

First Past the Post (FPTP), also called the plurality system, divides the country into single-member constituencies. The candidate with the most votes wins, even without crossing 50%. It is like a race: the first runner past the post wins, whether by a metre or a mile. India uses it for the Lok Sabha (543 constituencies) and the State Legislative Assemblies.

Proportional Representation (PR) makes each party's share of seats match its share of votes. The voter votes for a party and the party fills its seats from its list. In Israel and the Netherlands the whole country is one constituency. Argentina and Portugal use multi-member constituencies.

The two real examples in the chapter show the difference clearly. The first table is India in 1984, the second is Israel in 2015.

Why FPTP distorts. Votes are counted constituency by constituency. A party that is first in many seats by a modest margin gets every one of those seats, while a party that is second everywhere gets none. That is why the Telugu Desam, with a smaller vote share than the BJP, won far more seats: its votes were concentrated in one region, while the BJP's were spread thinly. Under PR, geography stops mattering, and only the total vote counts. Israel uses a minimum vote threshold of 3.25% to keep tiny parties out.

Two views. For the exam: FPTP is simple and gives clear winners, while PR gives fair seat shares. Another reading: supporters of PR argue that a system where millions of votes elect no one is unfair to smaller parties and to minorities. Supporters of FPTP argue that it tends to give governments a working majority and a named person answerable to each constituency, while PR often produces coalitions that bargain after the election. Both arguments are recognised in the study of electoral systems, and neither system is better on every measure.

Pause and predict: in the 2016 Tamil Nadu Assembly election the winning party polled 40.77% of the votes and won 135 of 234 seats. Roughly how many seats would it have won under PR?

Check your answer: about 95 seats (40.77% of 234), not 135. With less than the 118 seats needed for a majority, it would have needed a coalition partner. This is the textbook's point: FPTP turned a minority of votes into a clear majority of seats.

Where India uses which system

India does not use one system everywhere. The direct elections to the big legislatures use FPTP. The indirect elections, where a small group of elected members does the voting, use a form of PR called the Single Transferable Vote.

How the Single Transferable Vote works

In STV the voter ranks candidates: 1 for the first choice, 2 for the second, and so on. A candidate wins by reaching a quota of first preferences:

Quota = [total valid votes ÷ (seats + 1)] + 1

Take Rajasthan, where 4 Rajya Sabha seats are to be filled by 200 MLAs. Quota = (200 ÷ 5) + 1 = 41. The "+1" has a purpose: five candidates cannot all reach 41 votes because 5 × 41 = 205, which is more than 200. So at most four can qualify, which is exactly the number of seats. When a candidate has more than 41 votes, the surplus is passed on to the next preference marked. When no one reaches the quota, the candidate at the bottom is eliminated and those votes are passed on by next preference. This continues until all seats are filled.

Pause and predict: 6 seats are to be filled by 140 voters. What is the quota?

Check your answer: (140 ÷ 7) + 1 = 21. Check: 7 × 21 = 147 is more than 140, so at most six candidates can reach the quota.

Why India chose FPTP

The Constituent Assembly weighed both systems. FPTP won for reasons that connect directly to India's situation.

Reserved constituencies

India's makers wanted every social group to be represented, especially those that had faced centuries of exclusion. They had two models to choose from.

British rule had introduced separate electorates in 1909. The Constituent Assembly rejected the model because it deepened divisions between communities. In a reserved constituency, a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe candidate needs votes from the whole constituency, so the member has to speak for everyone in the area.

In the Lok Sabha 84 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 47 for Scheduled Tribes, in line with their share in the population. The reservation was meant for ten years but has been extended repeatedly, and the latest extension runs to 2030. The Delimitation Commission, set up by the President in cooperation with the Election Commission, draws constituency boundaries and decides which seats are reserved. ST seats are placed in areas where the ST population is highest, while SC seats are spread across regions because the SC population is more evenly spread across the country.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: seats are reserved for SCs and STs in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies. In reality: the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 (the 106th Amendment) provides for one third of seats in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies to be reserved for women. It comes into effect after the next delimitation of constituencies. Local bodies already have one third reservation for women under the 73rd and 74th Amendments. Why it matters: questions on reservation now mix all three groups, so know which level each applies to.

Who can vote and who can contest

The Election Commission: the umpire

Fair rules mean little if the umpire can be pushed around. That is why the Constitution gave the Election Commission of India (ECI) its own Article. Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the electoral rolls and of all elections to Parliament, the State Legislatures and the offices of the President and Vice-President in the Commission.

Its limits are as important as its powers. The ECI does not run Panchayat and Municipal elections. Those are conducted by independent State Election Commissioners.

The Commission has not always been a three member body. It was a single member body until 1989, became multi member just before the 1989 election, went back to a single member in 1990, and has been a three member body since 1993.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the President appoints the CEC and ECs on the advice of the Council of Ministers. In reality: since a 2023 law, the President appoints them on the recommendation of a selection committee made up of the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet minister nominated by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The tenure and removal rules are unchanged. Why it matters: the textbook rule is the safe answer in an exam, but newer questions may ask about the committee.

The Commission has become more assertive over the years. It postponed the 1991 election after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, and it postponed the 2002 Gujarat Assembly election, a decision the Supreme Court upheld. The textbook's point is that this came from using powers the Constitution already gave it, not from new powers.

The reform debate

Timeline

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Rights in the Indian Constitution covers the rights that make voting meaningful.
• Next: Executive shows who governs once the votes are counted and how the President is elected.
• Related: Legislature explains the two Houses that these elections fill.
• Class XII link: Era of One Party Dominance shows how FPTP shaped India's first decades of elections.