short note on electoral politics
Answers
Elections are a democratic way of selecting representatives.
Democracy ensures the right choice of the people’s representatives at regular interval of time.
They ensure that the representatives rule as per the wishes of the people.
Elections help voters to choose representatives who will make laws for them, form the government and take major decisions.
The voters can choose the party whose policies will guide the government and lawmaking.
Thus election is a mechanism by which people can choose their representatives at regular intervals and change them if they wish to.
Explanation:
To ensure political representation for historically marginalized groups in the lower house of the parliament, the Indian Constitution stipulates that each state reserve seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (formerly known as the untouchables, lowest in the country’s stratified social order) in proportion to their population in the state.
This means only candidates belonging to these groups can contest elections in reserved constituencies. In the 2009 elections, eighty-four seats for candidates from scheduled castes and forty-seven for scheduled tribe members are reserved, 24 percent of the total seats in the parliament’s lower house.
A pending bill seeking a 33 percent reservation for women in the parliament and state legislatures has been the subject of intense debate for over a decade.