Public Participation in the General Elections of India: An Overview since 1951

Democratic process of any country is based on the participation of the public to form the government through their elected representatives, and the nation having an electoral system in place to choose their representatives can be termed as a nation living true to its democratic essence, while as, the nation elusive of ground level public participation in forming governments can never be termed as living true to democratic colour. The present study is an attempt to understand the electoral process of India, the public participation in the democratic process of the country, which is already fifteen general elections old, lasted over the period 1951 to 2014. Attempt has been made to understand the areas like, growth of parties over the period of time, seat distribution, reservation of seats, electoral participation, polling stations, performance of major national political parties along with electoral turnout both collectively and on gender basis etc. Existence of the multi party system in India and the growth in parties over a period of time gets equally reflected by the fact that in 1951, 54 parties participated in the electoral process and the number grew up to 466 in 2014, reflecting a growth of over 792%. During all the general elections contested by candidates 77.43% contestants forfeited their deposits with an average of 135 political parties contested each general election. Over 80.45% elected candidates to the parliament during all the general elections held so far, represent national parties


INTRODUCTION
India is world's largest Democratic Republic, having a population of over 1.2 billion and still upholding and living true to its socialist, secular and democratic values. In terms of area, India is the seventh largest country in the world. India has a pluralistic social setup, having diversity at almost every front, be it racial, cultural, religious, and ethnic. The linguistic diversity of the country gets assessed by the fact that over 1600 languages are spoken across the length and breadth of the county. Indian lies to the north of the equator between 6° 44' and 35° 30' north latitude and 68° 7' and 97° 25' east longitude [1] and is located in South Asia, having a federal structure of governance. The modern India is being seen as come into existence on August 15, 1947, after attaining the independence from Britishers and since then democracy has moved on by conducting free and fair elections at regular intervals of time as per the electoral laws of the country enshrined in the constitution, by the election commission of a county, which is a constitutional body.
Election Commission of India is the sole authority vested with the superintendence to conduct general elections (Elections to the Parliament), to the legislature of every state and to the offices of President and Vice-President of India. Election Commission of India is the constitutional body of permanent nature, established on January 25, 1950 [2] . The election commission of India comprises of the Chief Election Commission and two Election Commissioners duly appointed by the President for a period of six years or up to the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. The stature and other perks of election commissioners is at par with that of Judges of the Supreme Court of India and the Chief Election Commissioner of India can be removed from his office only through impeachment by Parliament. It is mandatory for all political parties to register with the election commission of of the election commission of India, which within 2 years of its setup conducted successful elections in the country, which indeed was the accepted mode of Britishers.
Sudipta Kaviraj (2007) [20] undertook a study on the general elections of India and made observations that vote share of congress has steadily declined from 47.8% in 1957 to 37.6% in 1991 except in 1984 in which party secured 48.1% after the death of Smt. Indira Gandhi. The Vote share of congress fell to 34.3% after the emergency in 1977. Kumar (2002) [21] published his work in economic and political weekly about reforming Indian Electoral Process in which author shows reservations with the proposal made on the disclosure of candidates and was of the view that ambiguities in the bill need to be removed. Kothari R (1967) [22] in her article on the Congress 'System' in India talked about the multi-party system of India verses one party system

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
 To study and understand the electoral process of India, which is more a nation of multi cultures, multi linguistic, multi religions and of course of the multi party political system  To examine the general election trend of the country where population runs over 1.2 billion people and the voter turnout thereof  To quantify the growth of political parties, both at the national and federal level, growth of electors, contestants, political reservations etc.  To analyse the strengths and weakness of major national political parties, both in terms of their performance, their presence among masses, percentage of seats contested, percentage of success, the percentage of votes secured and also the percentage of candidates who forfeited their deposits.

METHODOLOGY AND SCOPE
The data for the present study was retrieved from the official website of the Election commission of India on August 21, 2015, which is more a case of data mining available at http://eci.gov.in/eci_main1/ElectionStatistics.aspx. The data retrieved was totally in raw and unstructured form as such was put in more helpful sequence by making it more structured so as to attain the objective of the study. All the relevant data was put to analysis by using various statistical tools and mathematical techniques.
The present study can be further extended to electoral process of the country at the federal level, the role of federal politics in the national polity of India and many similar aspects can be studied. Also on the similar lines electoral studies of other nations can be conducted whereby one can develop an idea about the reason of political instability among various nations and how far political stability is important for the growth and development of a nation in general and world in particular.
Limitations of the Study: -Although no major limitation came to the fore while retrieving data from the official website of the Election Commission of India, however, upon data structuration it emerged that data retrieved for the year 1951 and 1957 was inadequate in many places and accordingly the analysis under few tables has been carried out without such data and the boxes there have been incorporated with NA (Data Not Available). Accordingly, analysis in such tables has been undertaken by excluding the columns without data and the average figures and percentage thereof drawn at such places is based on considering the rest of the columns only.
Discussion and Data Analysis: -Indian National Congress (INC) came into being on December 28, 1885 in Bombay to fight for India's Independence, but the party continued to survive after independence and become one of formidable political parties in India to which Mahatma Gandhi was not in favour of. Since INC survived and emerged as the single largest political party during all the elections contested by party post independence and remained at the helm of affairs for over almost 90% of India's political rule. Although left parties like Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPM) had been contesting general elections in country from the very beginning of the electoral process but could not make any significant impact to entice voters of the country against the formidable and strong INC. Of the late Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) has emerged as strongest opposition party in the Indian polity and is gradually making its mark towards ruling the nation, to which it had already two brief stints during the 1991 and 1996 general elections. The role of other smaller political parties of both national and state level cannot be undermined, as these parties have proven to be the king-maker in the prevailing coalition political culture of the country, which more or less has become the order of the day of Indian polity especially after 1991.
The data retrieved from the official website of the Election Commission of India was put to analysis by employing statistical tools and techniques. To perform simple expressions like addition, subtraction, drawing percentage, etc. MS excel was equally put into use. Percentage at most of the places has been drawn up to two decimal places and the average figures at few places have been rounded off either to previous highest or next higher figure mostly based on below and above .5 expressions.    1951 1957 1962 1967 1971 1977 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009 2014 No of parties 22 Volume 64

Figure 2 Reservation of constituencies for socially disadvantaged sections and general people.
With the view to empower the backward sections of the Indian society, due political reservations were given to Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) of the country from the very beginning of the democratic process of the country. Political reservations to these two main socially disadvantaged sections of the Indian society were given on the basis of their population. Given this fact, we can see on average 14.84% parliamentary seats were reserved for scheduled casts and 7.27% for scheduled Tribes during each general election. Over a period of time the seats reserved for both the backward sections of society have been increased proportionately owing to the increase in total seats.

Note-Average figures from candidates fielded have been rounded off either to the next higher or to previous highest
The tabulation is an assessment of the performance of five major national political parties of India on the basis of the candidates field by each party in each individual election and the candidates elected thereof. CPI and the INC are the only parties, who have been active in the Indian political process since the beginning of the electoral process of the country. CPM joined the race in the year 1967, followed by the BJP in the year 1984 and BSP in the year 1998. Presence and popularity of INC among the Indian masses cannot be ignored. From 1951 to 1984 INC always emerged as the dominant party with a success percentage of over 70%, but as we move down from 1989 to 2009 there is a sharp decline in the performance of the INC as their winning percentage came down to nearly 30% and on aggregate if we see their success percentage during all the elections they contested remained 50.29%, which still is much better to their rivals. CPI also showed declines from election to election and on average has a success percentage of 18.90%. CPM almost remained consistent during all the elections the party contested, with an aggregate success percentage of 39.51%. The BJP came on the national scene with a modest beginning with 2 seats in 1984 and had some mixed fortunes during the subsequent elections and the fact of the matter is party acted as the major opposition since 1989 and has an aggregate success percentage of 37.96%. BSP as a party has a nationwide presence as the party remained successful in exploiting the cast card in the country, but not much to their success, as the party could garner only 3.08% aggregate success during all the elections it contested.

Note-Average figures from candidates fielded have been rounded off either to the next higher or to previous highest
Performance and the presence of political parties among the masses is also assessed by evaluating those weak areas wherein the party's performance may have remained below expected lines, one such measure is to undertake the analysis of candidates who forfeited their deposits during elections. In the above tabulation, analysis has accordingly been drawn to assess the percentage of candidates among major national political parties of India who forfeited their deposits. Strength and presence of INC among India masses get also reflected by the fact that during all the general elections contested by party only 10.56% contestants on aggregate have forfeited their deposits. From 1951 to 1989 elections the forfeiture percentage of the INC was below 1.00% and this percentage grew during the latter half viz. from 1991 to 2014. On aggregate 27.87% contestants of BJP forfeited their deposits, followed by 80.72% BSP contestants, 45.02% contestants of CPI and 25.04% CPM contestants. The rest of the national parties forfeited their deposits on an aggregate of 53.18% of their contestants.

Figure 5 Election to election basis electorate size and votes cast.
Above tabulation reflects the total electorate of the country during each individual election and the subsequent voter turnout thereof in each general election, both collectively and on the gender basis. As per the natural sex ration there are 105 females to per 100 males, but if look at the   There are a number of recorded instances in the electoral process, whereby a party having a major share of votes suffers defeat and a party with a lesser voter percentage emerges winner. Well, these facts can be owed to different reasons. Given this fact in the above tabulation attempt has been made to reflect the figures about the percentage of vote share among national parties, state level parties and the independents.  The presence of political party among masses also gets reflected by the percentage of votes obtained by a particular political party during an election. Even one can easily come across an instance whereby a party may have obtained better percentage of votes over rivals, but still they end up as losers, which can be owed to the fact for not having secured the proportionate vote in maximum constituencies. Accordingly, in the above tabulation attempt has been made to assess the percentage of votes obtained by major national political parties to that of state and other political parties during all elections and the average percentage of votes obtained during all general elections held during the period of study. The average percentage of votes obtained by INC during all elections is 36.33% the maximum among all other national and state level political parties, but still the worrying aspect for INC is its declining percentage of votes obtained as we move from 1951 to 2014. BJP on average has obtained 20.08% votes during all the elections and the better part of BJP is that over a period of time it has emerged as one of the major opposing force for INC, which is still the dominant political party of the county. State parties, on average have received 18.54% votes and Independents 7.59% votes. CPI and CPM despite having a long presence in the Indian polity could never make it big and this gets better reflected by their abysmal vote share of 3.36% and 5.34% respectively.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Multiparty system of India can be considered as one of the weakest link in Indian polity, which only helps towards the contribution of weak and instable political system of country. Needless to say that political instability affects the overall growth and development of nation and encourages more undesirable practices, which include corruption & nepotism and furthers barriers in the name of cast, colour, creed, culture, region, religion etc. Since there is no check on the upcoming political parties and other political formations, so this exponential growth of political parties will continue in years to come, without severing any fundamental or basic purpose of the masses of the country. Need is to look into this unprecedented growth of political parties of the country by having a check on their growth by putting in place some tough measures for any desirable party to be recognized as a political party both at the national and the federal level.
Reservation of seats for disadvantaged sections of the society by and large seems a good idea and should be carried forward at least till the time these sections be rated at par with advantaged sections of society. There is every likeliness, that even if at some point of time the reservations are removed the cast ridden society of India will help it to survive on its own, by choosing people from their own sections only.