Should Political reforms precede Electoral reforms in India??

Political and electoral reforms are interlinked, interdependent with each other. In the present scenario, the people views on politics are mostly negative, as people in our country witnessed large scale political corruption, delayed actions of governments, false election promises since decades,..etc. In order to change above mentioned situation, we need strong political reforms and electoral reforms. Now there is a big question that, which we should adopt first; either political reforms or electoral reforms. There are many arguments regarding the implementation of these reforms. This article is aimed to explain how political reforms can bring electoral reforms in our country, as written below.

Political reforms means improving laws in accordance with expectations of the public; in order to ensure fairness in democracy and strengthen the political system. A Democracy survives with elections where the electoral reforms are essential in political systems.

Electoral reforms refer to the development of an electoral system which includes the change in voting&ballot design, delimitation and various regulatory laws 

We need strong political reforms followed by electoral reforms, because politicians i.e legislators have the power to change laws at the end of the day. Many ask that how politicians can change the mindset of their colleagues, who belong to the same group; but we should not forget that there are some other crucial players who can pressure our politicians and bring reforms, the crucial players are Judiciary i.e Supreme court and many non-governmental organisations. As it is evident through the enactment of Lokpal act.

There are some ways to strengthen our political system:

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• we need to amend the anti-defection law and there is a need to transfer speaker's unquestionable power in disqualifying the rebel MLA; the power should be transferred to a state commission consists of chief justice of the state, leader of the opposition, speaker. moreover, the issue regarding defection should be resolved within 6 weeks.
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• As defections always hurt the political feelings of large masses due to which many people don't want to cast their vote, in this scenario election commission has no role in defection, on the other hand, election commission is trying to increase polling turnout but in this situation of defections where public opinion after election is neglected, people are losing faith on elections.

credit: third party image reference

• moreover, the election expenditure incurred by political parties should be scrutinized and it should be mandated that every single transaction of the political parties shall be done through banks and they should file income tax returns every year.

As mentioned above, these are some of the ways of political reforms which can bring electoral reforms in India.

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