India needs a proportional representation (PR) system or proportionate electoral system(PES) of election in place of the current First Past The Post (FPTP) in practice to represent the mandate of all the voters in governance. The ongoing practice in India does not reflect the correct proportion between the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats captured by political parties in State Assemblies and Parliament.
The recent election results in the four States of Chhatishgarh, MP, Rajasthan and Telengana have reflected such imbalances in the percentage of votes and seats in their respective State assemblies which is not a good sign of representation in democracy. A very insignificant difference in vote share and visible difference in seats won by the parties is a matter of concern in representation.
The Rajasthan State result shows a mere difference of 2 percent of votes between Congress and BJP but BJP has got 46 more seats than Congress. The BJP has 41.7 percent of votes with 115 seats and Congress has 39.5 percent of votes with 69 seats. Among others, the BSP got 1.8 percent, RLP got 2.3 percent and BTP got 2.25 percent.
In the case of Chhatisgarh, with a 4 percent of vote difference, BJP got 19 seats more than Congress. The BJP with 46.3 percent of the vote share got 54 seats and Congress with 42.3 percent of the vote share got 35 seats . Similarly, in the case of Telengana with only 2 percent of the votes, Congress got 15 more seats than the BRS. Among others, BJP got 13.8 percent and AIMIM got 2.1 percent.
MP has also had similar results, as the BJP got 48.8 percent of the votes and 163 seats and Congress got 42.19 percent of the votes with only 66 seats, which is less than half of the seats gained by the BJP. Among others, BSP got 3.2 percent of the votes.
The question is why all votes are not being converted into seats and the winners were not represented by 51 percent of voters? The winners are not really enjoying the popular mandate in terms of vote share; rather with less votes they got elected in majority of seats to govern.
In a multi-party system with a highly polarised division of votes, the votes of different political parties must be converted into seats. As a result, even political parties with a sizeable vote percentage are under represented in Assemblies and Parliaments. The national parties are also have disproportionate representation in Lok Sabha. Their votes have not been converted into seats.
The electoral system for India was debated in the Constituent Assembly of Independent India and both Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr Amedekar were in favour of PR but the proposal was withheld on the grounds of low literacy rate among voters and national unification as a major concern those days.
It was perceived that PR may encourage smaller parties and bring threat to stability of Government and national interest and unity. The FPTP system is mostly followed by former British colonies and best suit to bi-party system. The countries including, India, Canada, USA and UK have adopted FPTP system. The countries moving to multi- party system are seriously looking for more representative character of their electoral systems for inclusive governance.
The issues of representation are vital to democracy and world wide many varieties of PR system have been well accepted in about 90 democratic countries. Many are trying to shift from FPTP to PR for better representation and to avoid waste of votes. It is found that countries with PR have better women participation as well as good human development index. Because representation has a link with development that facilitates participation and decision-making process.
There has been a demand by political parties in India, especially the Left parties and other regional parties such as DMK, to shift to PR system but national parties such as Congress and BJP have not paid much attention to the demand. The appropriate bodies such as the Law Commission and the Election Commission of India have also recommended for PR system. The neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Sri Lanka have adopted PR system to give representation to more parties and socio-ethnic groups who are politically marginalised as minorities. Nepal has PR system with reservation to ensure better representation of the socially marginalised sections. The country has changed from monarchy as a theocratic country and from FPTP system to a secular country with parallel system without threshold in the Parliament election.
The debate of representation took place in the first Round Table Conference in 1931 in London followed by communal award but not much into the system of elections. Post independence, India enacted the Representation of People’s Act 1951, and started with universal adult franchise, multi-member constituency and reserve seats for SCs and STs but women and religious minorities were not included in the system. It led to insignificant representation of women, minorities and others in the Parliament and State Assemblies. The constituency based elections in a huge socio-religious diverse society mostly reflect the mandate of the polarised communal majorities as political majority and the representatives of smaller parties, ethnic and religious minorities are not getting adequately represented in the present system though they have support of the a sizeable voters because their votes are not converted into seats. The minority leaders in the Constituent Assembly such as Kaji Sayedi Karimudin raised these issues.
In modern democratic governance, political representation of citizens is vital to the public policy making process. Every citizen /voter must have the right to be represented in legislative bodies that frame policies for their citizens' development, distribution of power and resources. But India being the largest democracy has not yet giving representation to a major section of political parties contesting elections. In order to widen our democracy we need to change our electoral system to make it more inclusive of a major section of voters.
