The Election Commission of India (henceforth, the EC), shouldering the responsibility of conducting parliamentary and state elections in India, operates the colossal electoral machinery and also works towards social mobilisation that is aimed at deepening democracy. This constitutional institution works all year round, holding elections asynchronously at dual levels. This book looks at the EC and electoral practice in India in a time period spanning between 1990 (the year just before the 10th parliamentary elections of 1991) and 2019 (the year of the 17th parliamentary elections). It analyses the EC's relations and interactions with pivotal state institutions – namely the parliament, the Supreme Court (which along with the EC are constitutional institutions in India) and political parties – to modernise the electoral machinery and streamline democratic procedures. The book primarily puts forth the argument that besides the citizen voters, political parties, social groups and civil society, a crucial role is also played by the EC in consolidating the project of democracy through its work of supervising and conducting elections. In other words, through its regulatory role, the EC is as much involved in the project of democratisation as other institutions or individuals. The book also attempts a comparison between some aspects of the electoral machinery in India and those of a few other liberal democracies (through examples of electoral practice and administration from the United States [US], the United Kingdom [UK], South Africa, Japan and Canada) to highlight the role electoral institutions play in democratisation. This contrast also brings the EC's position and working in India into sharper relief and clarifies its sociopolitical situatedness in India.

Time Location

The year 1990 has been chosen as the starting point of the book because it precedes the 10th general elections, and it was around this time that the party system in India saw unprecedented fragmentation leading to an intense electoral competition. One saw a more actively participating EC that had to mediate the rising inter-party differences and squabbles. As I have argued earlier (Katju, 2006), it was at this time that the EC emerged as the fourth important institutional arrangement in the separation-of-powers model of the Indian political system, alongside the executive, the parliament and the judiciary that oversaw participatory politics.