The Present Electoral System of India need to be Proportionate Electoral System

In Brief

The Present Electoral System of India

Indian Democracy has the First Past The Post (FPTP) as its electoral system to provide representation to voters in State Assemblies and in the Parliament of India

This representation system allows political parties to come to power both in the States and at the Centre with woeful minority of votes.

Parties with less than 30% of votes win more percentage of seats and claim the right to form governments. This leaves out a vast majority of voters unrepresented in governance.

This is because majority is understood to be the one who gets more number of votes than other contestants instead of being over 50%. There are members in the present Lok Sabha who got less than 10% votes but won the seat as others did not manage to get that many votes. There are only 5 members in the present Lok Sabha who have won with more than 50% of votes.

The percentage of votes that a party gains is not the same as the percentage of seats it gains in this electoral system. This enables parties with fewer votes to gain more seats and come to power.

The present electoral system in India encourages corruption, use of muscle power, communalism etc. in order to gain the slight margin of winning votes. The parties that come to power are not mandated by the citizens. Only parties that have the power to manipulate voters are able to come to power. These are generally parties that have dominant, fascist, communal and casteist ideology.


Proportionate Electoral System

CERI proposes a Proportionate Electoral System in India. This system is being widely in practice in many democracies of the world and more and more countries in the world are shifting to Proportional Representation.

In PR electoral system any party can gain seats only in proportion to the percentage of votes that it gains. There will not be any difference between the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats. Thus only parties with more percentage of voter support can come to power.

In PR system majority means more than 50% of votes. The other votes are not wasted.

They are given to other candidates in order to provide representation to all voters in the Assemblies and in the Parliament.

If parties are unable to gain more than 50% of votes they have to make coalitions of parties with similar ideologies before elections in order to influence voters.

PR system has multi-member constituencies. This will enable two or more members getting elected from the same constituency in order to provide representation to different parties.

In PR electoral system inner party democracy is a must as before the elections political parties will have to prepare a list of candidates selected through party elections and submit the same to Election Commission. Candidates of parties will be declared elected from this list in the same proportion as the percentage votes that a party or a coalition gains.

In the party list the constituency that a candidate will represent will be indicated. This will enable voters from that constituency to vote for the party to which their popular candidate belongs. If a party fields more and more popular candidates their percentage of votes will increase in many constituencies. Thus the popularity of party ideology and the popularity of candidates are both important in PR system.

Many countries with PR system follow State sponsoring of election expenses. This prevents corruption, money and muscle power, malpractices, play of emotions on communal and caste basis etc.

Proportionate Electoral System provides ample space for formation of coalitions representing smaller communities that do not have the chance of being represented in FPTP. Smaller parties representing unrepresented communities can make a coalition and gain required percentage of votes in order to come to a winning position of power.

It is also very important for the survival of democratic governance in India in favour of the poor that corruption and electoral violence are minimized and inner party democracy is enhanced. This is possible only in the Proportionate Electoral System



Therefore, the Campaign for Proportionate Electoral System in India appeals to all citizens of India to give a serious thought to changing the electoral system in India from the present FPTP to the Proportionate Electoral System. CERI has a ten years plan to achieve this in India. It has a three-pronged strategy of mobilizing support among Intellectuals, Academicians, of lobbying with Parliamentarians and of applying pressures on government through grassroots education and mobilization.



We appeal to you to join this Campaign and mobilize as much support as possible to change the electoral system of India in order to gain true democratic representation to all citizens of India irrespective of their caste, community and religion.

For More Details contact :-

ceri.reds@gmail.com