Election Commission of India is a constitutionally established authority which is responsible for conducting elections in India.
- Election commission is a permanent and independent body. It also conducts elections of State Legislatures, President and Vice President.
- Election Commission is controlled by chief election commissioner and two other election commissioners.
- President of India appoints the chief election commissioner for a term of six years or up to the age 65 of election commissioner, whichever is earlier. Other two commissioners are appointed by the president and chief election commissioner.
- In the beginning there was only the chief commissioner in the election commission. On 16 October, 1989 two additional commissioners were appointed for the first time to reduce the work load of chief election commissioner. Election commission became permanently multi member body after the constitution amendment act,1993.
- The first election commissioner was Sukumar Sen. Current election commissioner is Achal Kumar Jyoti.
- The chief election commissioner can be dismissed from his position only through impeachment of parliament. Other two commissioners can be removed by the the president through the recommendation of chief election commissioner.
- With the improvement of technologies, election commission introduced EVM (electronic voting machine ) to improve election procedures. It was first tried in 1982 in Kerala for legislative assembly elections in limited numbers.
Some facts about EVM
- EVMs are made of two units – Control unit and Ballot unit. Control unit belongs to polling officer who validates the voter’s identity and ballot unit belongs to voter in secret compartment to cast his vote. Once the polling officer validates the identity, then voter can cast his vote.
- A EVM can store maximum 3840 votes.
- EVM’s ballot unit can have 16 candidates. For more candidates, two or more ballot units (Up to 4) are joined. So, EVM’s can be used for maximum 64 candidates
- EVM does not require external power. It runs by the 6V alkaline battery. Which makes EVM useful in most disconnected constituency also.
- It is manufactured by BEL, Bangalore and ECI, Hyderabad
| NOTA (None of the Above): This option is provided to voter from 2013. If the voter does not like any of the candidates then he can use NOTA option. This option is based on the principle that “consent requires the ability to withhold consent in an election”. Still now the votes castes against NOTA are counted as invalid. But it is useful to increase voting percentage and thus helps to reduce bogus votes. |
Functions of election commission
- The main function of election commission is to conduct a fair election.
- Election commission is responsible for declaring different important dates for election, vote counting, declaration of result.Every party needs to be recognized by election commission. They needs to register their electoral symbol..
- Election commission examines the expenses of the candidates for the election.
- Before every election, election commission declares a code of conduct to be followed by the parties.
- They prepare and revises the voter list and also issues voter’s identity card
