I. The Shortcomings of Electoral System in India: Some notable shortcomings of electoral system in India are discussed below:

1. Use of money power by most of the political parties and extraordinary influential independent candidates. Many corrupt practices are adopted during elections such as bribing, rigging or voter intimidation, impersonation and providing transport and conveyance to voters to and from the polling stations. The reports of liquor being distributed in poor areas are frequent during elections.

2. Use of muscle power by criminal elements or leaders having criminal backgrounds or history. Due to these elements political violence during elections has increased.

3. Caste and Religion play a very decisive role in elections of India. Generally on the basis of caste religion influence tickets are given to winning candidates by most of the political parties, even electorates vote on the caste and commercial lines.

4. Misuse of Government Machinery: All the political parties do not have equal opportunity in respect of access to resources. The party in power is always in advantageous position than the opposition parties. There is a widespread allegation that the party in power accomplishes misuse of government machinery.

II. Suggestions for improving the system:

(a) In order to restore the confidence of the public in the democratic electoral system, many electoral reforms have been recommended from time to time by Tarkunde Committee and Goswami Committee which were particularly appointed to study and report on the scheme for Electoral Reforms in the year 1974 and 1990 respectively. Out of these recommendations some have been implemented.

(b) In fact, it was under the chairmanship of the then Chief Election Commissioner, T.N. Seshan, that Election Commission initiated many more measures to ensure free and fair elections. Some of the reforms which have been implemented so far are as follows:

1. The voting age has been lowered from 21 years to 18 years. This has helped increase the number of voters and response confidence in the youth of the country.

2. Another landmark change has been the increase in the amount of security deposit by the candidate to prevent many non serious candidates from contesting elections with an ulterior motive.

3. The photo identity cards have been introduced to eradicate bogus voting or impersonation.

4. With the introduction of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) the voting capturing, rigging and bogus voting may not be possible. The use of

EVM will in the long-run result in reducing the cost of holding elections and also the incidence of tampering during counting of votes.

5. If a discrepancy is found between the numbers of votes polled and number of total votes counted, the Returning Officer away reports the matter forthwith to Election Commission. Election Commission on such a report may either declare the poll at the particular polling station as void and give a date for fresh poll or countermand election in that constituency.