Electoral Reforms & Voting Behaviour — UPSC Polity

Committees on Electoral Reforms & Reforms Before 1996

🎯 Exam priority: Important. The single biggest thing this chapter needs updated from the book: the Electoral Bonds Scheme it describes as active was struck down by the Supreme Court in February 2024. Everything else — the Dinesh Goswami reforms, NOTA, VVPAT — remains squarely current.

India's electoral reforms trace to over a dozen committees and commissions: the Tarkunde Committee (appointed 1974 by Jaya Prakash Narayan during his "Total Revolution" movement, unofficial, reported 1975); the Dinesh Goswami Committee (1990); the Vohra Committee (1993) on the crime-politics nexus; the Indrajit Gupta Committee (1998) on state funding of elections, chaired by a former Home Minister, which reported in 1999 endorsing state funding as constitutionally and legally justified; the Law Commission's 170th (1999), 244th (2014) and 255th (2015) Reports; the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (2000-02), chaired by M.N. Venkatachaliah; and the Second ARC's Ethics in Governance report (2007), chaired by Veerappa Moily.

Reforms Before 1996

• The 61st Amendment (1988) cut the voting age to 18 — already covered fully in this playlist's Elections article. Also introduced in this period: officers preparing electoral rolls being deemed on deputation to the Election Commission (1989); a higher proposer requirement for Rajya Sabha/state Council nominations (10% of constituency electors, or 10 electors, whichever is less); the enabling provision for EVMs — first tried experimentally in 1998 in select Rajasthan/MP/Delhi assembly constituencies, then used for a full state's Assembly election for the first time in Goa, 1999; a booth-capturing provision allowing poll adjournment/countermanding, covering seizing a polling station, allowing only one's own supporters to vote, threatening electors away, or seizing the counting venue; and the Electors' Photo Identity Card (EPIC), decided in 1993 to curb bogus voting and impersonation.

The 1996 Reforms — The Dinesh Goswami Committee's Legacy

Most of today's familiar electoral procedures trace to a single 1990 report — the Dinesh Goswami Committee's — even though its recommendations only became law six years later.

The 1996 Reforms — The Dinesh Goswami Committee's Legacy

• In 1990, the V.P. Singh Government's National Front appointed the Dinesh Goswami Committee (chaired by the then Law Minister) to study electoral drawbacks. Its 1990 recommendations were implemented in 1996: candidates now list under three categories — recognised-party, registered-unrecognised-party, and independent — each alphabetised internally; conviction under the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 (insulting the flag/Constitution, obstructing the National Anthem) disqualifies a candidate for 6 years; liquor sale/distribution is banned within a polling area for 48 hours before poll close; nominations need 10 proposers unless the candidate is recognised-party-sponsored (then just 1); a candidate's death before polling no longer countermands the election (a recognised party gets 7 days to name a replacement); by-elections must happen within 6 months of a vacancy (except when the remaining term is under 1 year, or the ECI certifies genuine difficulty); voters get a paid holiday on polling day; candidates are capped at contesting 2 constituencies at once; carrying arms near a polling station became a cognizable offence; and the minimum withdrawal-to-polling gap shrank from 20 to 14 days.

Reforms After 1996 — Disclosure, Rajya Sabha & Transparency

After 1996, reforms shifted toward transparency — candidates disclosing their own past, and money/media rules meant to level the playing field.

Reforms After 1996 — Disclosure, Rajya Sabha & Transparency

• In 1997, Presidential/Vice-Presidential proposer/seconder counts rose (10→50 for President, 5→20 for VP), with security deposits up from ₹2,500 to ₹15,000. 1998 allowed requisitioning staff (local bodies, nationalised banks, universities, LIC, government undertakings) for election duty. 1999 introduced postal ballot voting for ECI-notified classes of persons. 2003 was an especially busy year: proxy voting was extended to Armed Forces service voters; the ECI ordered every candidate to disclose, on their nomination affidavit, criminal convictions/pending cases (2+ year offences, charged/cognizance-taken within 6 months of filing), assets/liabilities (including spouse/dependents), and educational qualifications — false disclosure is now an electoral offence; Rajya Sabha elections dropped the domicile requirement (any parliamentary constituency elector nationwide now qualifies) and switched from secret to open ballot (showing the marked ballot to one's party agent) to curb cross-voting and money power; campaigning leaders' travel expenses were exempted from candidate election-expense limits; the government began free electoral-roll supply to recognised-party candidates; unlimited political contributions became permissible (with mandatory ₹20,000+ reporting to the ECI for tax-relief claims); and the ECI gained power to allocate equitable electronic-media time based on a party's past performance.

• Separately, Braille signage features for visually-impaired voters were piloted in a 2004 Andhra Pradesh bye-election, expanded across Delhi's 2008 Assembly elections, and rolled out more broadly during the 2009 Fifteenth Lok Sabha election.

Reforms Since 2010 — NOTA, VVPAT & Judicial Interventions

From 2010 onward, reforms grew sharper-edged — real judicial interventions, and two genuinely transformative voting-technology additions.

Reforms Since 2010 — NOTA, VVPAT & Judicial Interventions

• 2009-10 brought: an exit-poll publication ban during the notified period; a 3-month time limit for referring corrupt-practice disqualification cases to the President; extending corrupt-practice liability to all ECI-appointed officials; higher security deposits (Lok Sabha: ₹10,000→25,000 general, ₹5,000→12,500 SC/ST; Assembly: ₹5,000→10,000 general, ₹2,500→5,000 SC/ST); an appellate authority within the district (District Magistrate-level, rather than the state's Chief Electoral Officer) for Electoral Registration Officer disputes; and voting rights for NRIs registered in their Indian constituency of residence.

• 2013 saw online electoral-roll enrolment; the Supreme-Court-directed NOTA (None of the Above) option (first used in 2013 State Assembly elections, continued through the 2014 Sixteenth Lok Sabha election) — even if NOTA outpolls every candidate, the highest individual vote-getter still wins; and VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail), an independent EVM-attached printout displaying the vote for 7 seconds before dropping into a sealed box — the Supreme Court called it "an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections," and it was first used in the 2013 Noksen (Nagaland) Assembly bye-election.

• Two important 2013 judicial interventions: after the Supreme Court upheld a Patna High Court ruling (Chief Election Commissioner v. Jan Chaukidar) that jailed/police-custody persons couldn't contest elections, Parliament amended the RPA, 1951 to reverse this — a person remains an elector despite a voting prohibition, and disqualification can only follow the Act's own specific grounds. Separately, in Lily Thomas v. Union of India, the Supreme Court struck down Section 8(4) of the RPA, 1951 (which gave convicted MPs/MLAs a 3-month appeal window before disqualification) — convicted legislators are now immediately disqualified; a government Bill to reverse this ruling was introduced but later withdrawn. From May 2015, ballot papers/EVMs also began carrying candidate photographs to avoid namesake confusion.

Political Funding Reforms — Cash Caps, Corporate Contributions & the Electoral Bonds Scheme's Rise and Fall

Political-funding reform is where this chapter needs the sharpest update — a scheme the book presents as a live, ongoing feature of Indian elections was comprehensively struck down within the past two years.

Political Funding Reforms — Cash Caps, Corporate Contributions & the Electoral Bonds Scheme's Rise and Fall

• The 2017 Budget made two funding changes: it cut the anonymous cash-donation ceiling per individual donor to a political party from ₹20,000 to ₹2,000 (still in force — parties needn't report sub-₹2,000 donors, but must record them); and it removed the Companies Act's cap on corporate political contributions (previously 7.5% of a company's average net profit over its preceding three years), also dropping the requirement to disclose which party received a donation (only an aggregate total was required).

• In 2018, the government notified the Electoral Bond Scheme — a bearer banking instrument carrying no buyer/payee name, purchasable by Indian citizens or India-incorporated entities, usable only for donations to parties that had secured ≥1% of votes in the last Lok Sabha/Assembly election, encashable only via an authorised-bank political-party account, issued in denominations from ₹1,000 to ₹1 crore, with buyer information kept confidential except to a competent court or law-enforcement agency investigating a registered case. The same year, foreign funding was permitted for political parties, via an amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010's definition of a "foreign company."

• This funding framework has since been substantially reversed. On 15 February 2024, a unanimous five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India, struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme entirely as unconstitutional — holding that anonymous political funding violates a voter's Article 19(1)(a) right to information, given the heightened risk of quid pro quo corruption from undisclosed (especially corporate) donations. The same judgment held the 2017 removal of the Companies Act's corporate-donation cap and party-specific disclosure requirement to be arbitrary and violative of Article 14's equality guarantee, effectively restoring the original capped, party-specific disclosure regime. The Court ordered an immediate halt to bond sales and directed the State Bank of India to publicly disclose full historical purchase and encashment data. The ₹2,000 anonymous cash-donation cap, unaffected by this ruling, remains in force today.

• The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 made four further changes: enabling Aadhaar-linked electoral rolls to curb multiple enrolment; expanding electoral-roll qualifying dates from just 1 January to four dates a year (1 January, 1 April, 1 July, 1 October); making service-voter provisions gender-neutral (replacing "wife" with "spouse," letting spouses vote in person or by postal ballot); and widening the grounds for requisitioning premises beyond polling stations/ballot-box storage, to cover post-poll counting, EVM/VVPAT storage, and accommodating security/polling personnel.

Voting Behaviour — Meaning, Significance & Determinants

Beyond the rules governing an election lies a genuinely distinct question: why do voters actually vote the way they do — the subject of an entire dedicated field of political science.

Voting Behaviour — Meaning, Significance & Determinants

• Voting (electoral) behaviour studies how and why people vote as they do. Plano and Riggs defined it as "concerned with the ways in which people tend to vote... and the reasons why"; Gordon Marshall emphasised the "determinants of why people vote as they do and how they arrive at the decisions." The dedicated field, Psephology, borrows its name from the classical Greek "psephos" (a voting pottery shard). The field matters because it illuminates political socialisation, democracy's internalisation among elites and masses, whether electoral politics continues or breaks with the past, and whether political development is modern or primordial. N.G.S. Kini framed voting as simultaneously a mode of legitimising democratic rule, an act of political-community participation, a decision-making act, a culturally-embedded role, and a direct citizen-government link.

• Determinants of Indian voting behaviour span socio-economic and political factors: Caste — Rajni Kothari observed "Indian politics is casteist, and caste is politicised"; Paul Brass noted large local castes typically back a respected caste-member or an identified party. Religion — exploited via communal propaganda despite India's secular character. Language — linguistic sentiment shaped the 1956-onward state reorganisation and fuelled parties like DMK and TDP. Region — regional/sub-regional identity fuels regional parties, occasionally even election-boycott calls. Personality — charismatic leaders (Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, JP, Vajpayee, Modi) have swayed electorates nationally and regionally alike.

• Money — despite expenditure limits, cash/liquor/goods exchange for votes remains real, though Paul Brass noted money's influence weakens in a "wave election" — one where a single national tendency, driven by an issue transcending local calculations, sweeps up uncommitted voters everywhere. Performance of the ruling party — judged against its manifesto promises, giving rise to the anti-incumbency factor (illustrated by Congress's 1977 and Janata's 1980 defeats). Party identification — voters with strong party attachment vote loyally regardless of that party's record. Ideology — commitment to communism, capitalism, secularism etc. shapes some voters' choices. Other factors include pre-election political events (war, assassination, scandals), economic conditions (inflation, unemployment), factionalism, candidate orientation, campaign quality, political family background, and media's role.

Further Reading

• Standard NCERT-level texts and reference books on the Indian Constitution and Polity (any UPSC reading list).

• The Representation of the People Act, 1951 (as amended); and the Supreme Court's judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (2024).

Why UPSC Asks This

• The Electoral Bonds Scheme's 2024 unconstitutionality ruling is the single most important currency update in this whole chapter — never present it as an active, ongoing mechanism.

• NOTA and VVPAT are among the most-tested recent reforms — know precisely that NOTA never actually stops the highest-vote candidate from winning, and VVPAT's slip displays for exactly 7 seconds.

• Rajni Kothari's caste observation and Paul Brass's "wave election" concept are the two most quotable, most-cited facts in the voting-behaviour half of this chapter.

Test Yourself: Practice Questions & PYQs

Electoral Reforms & Voting Behaviour practice — the Dinesh Goswami Committee's 1996-implemented reforms, post-1996 disclosure/Rajya Sabha/transparency changes, NOTA/VVPAT and key judicial interventions since 2010, the currency-critical Electoral Bonds Scheme's rise and 2024 fall, and the full range of voting-behaviour determinants. Then Prelims-pattern PYQs.

Practice Questions

Q1. The Dinesh Goswami Committee on electoral reforms was appointed in 1990 by the government headed by:

• (a) P.V. Narasimha Rao

• (b) Chandra Shekhar

• (c) Rajiv Gandhi

• (d) V.P. Singh

Q2. The Vohra Committee, appointed in 1993, examined:

• (a) The nexus between crime and politics

• (b) Amendments to criminal law

• (c) Reform of electoral disqualifications

• (d) State funding of elections

Q3. Electronic Voting Machines were used for the first time in a general election covering an entire state's Assembly in:

• (a) Delhi, 2003

• (b) Rajasthan, 1998

• (c) Goa, 1999

• (d) Madhya Pradesh, 1998

Q4. As per the 1996 electoral reforms, a person convicted under the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 is disqualified from contesting elections for:

• (a) 10 years

• (b) 3 years

• (c) 5 years

• (d) 6 years

Q5. Under the 1996 reforms, the minimum gap between the last date for withdrawal of candidature and the polling date was reduced from 20 days to:

• (a) 16 days

• (b) 14 days

• (c) 18 days

• (d) 10 days

Q6. The 2003 changes to Rajya Sabha elections included removing the domicile requirement for candidates and switching from secret ballot to:

• (a) Electronic voting exclusively

• (b) Postal ballot only

• (c) Proxy voting for all members

• (d) Open ballot

Q7. Under the NOTA provision introduced in Indian elections since 2013, if the number of voters opting for NOTA exceeds the votes polled by every candidate:

• (a) The candidate with the highest votes among the contestants is still declared elected

• (b) NOTA itself is declared the winner

• (c) The election is countermanded and re-held

• (d) A fresh round of nominations is invited

Q8. The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slip remains visible to the voter through a transparent window for:

• (a) 10 seconds

• (b) 7 seconds

• (c) 5 seconds

• (d) 3 seconds

Q9. In Lily Thomas v. Union of India (2013), the Supreme Court struck down Section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which had:

• (a) Allowed convicted legislators a three-month window to appeal before disqualification took effect

• (b) Permitted anonymous corporate donations to political parties

• (c) Required candidates to disclose their criminal antecedents

• (d) Barred jailed persons from contesting elections

Q10. The Electoral Bonds Scheme, notified in 2018, was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in:

• (a) 2022

• (b) 2024

• (c) 2025

• (d) 2020

Q11. The Supreme Court's 2024 judgment striking down the Electoral Bonds Scheme primarily held that anonymous political funding violates:

• (a) Article 21 alone

• (b) Article 19(1)(a), the voter's right to information

• (c) Article 14 alone

• (d) Article 32 alone

Q12. Political analyst Rajni Kothari's observation on Indian voting behaviour was that:

• (a) Regional parties never influence national politics

• (b) Money is the sole determinant of Indian elections

• (c) Religion has no bearing on Indian electoral outcomes

• (d) Indian politics is casteist, and caste is politicised

UPSC Previous Year Questions (PYQs)

Pattern: which committee studied which issue; precise numeric reform details (6-year disqualification, 14-day campaign gap, 7-second VVPAT display, ₹2,000 cash cap); the Jan Chaukidar and Lily Thomas rulings' precise holdings; the Electoral Bonds Scheme's 2024 unconstitutionality and its Article 19(1)(a)/Article 14 grounds; named quotes on caste and wave elections.

Q13. Consider the following statements: (1) The 2017 Budget removed the cap on corporate contributions to political parties that previously stood at 7.5% of a company's average net profit. (2) This removal was subsequently held to be arbitrary and violative of Article 14 by the Supreme Court in 2024. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 2 only

• (b) Both 1 and 2

• (c) 1 only

• (d) Neither 1 nor 2

Q14. With reference to jailed or police-custody persons contesting elections, consider the following statements: (1) The Supreme Court, in Chief Election Commissioner v. Jan Chaukidar (2013), held that such persons were not qualified to contest elections. (2) Parliament subsequently amended the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to allow such persons to contest. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) Neither 1 nor 2

• (b) 2 only

• (c) 1 only

• (d) Both 1 and 2

Q15. Consider the following statements regarding the Electoral Bond Scheme as it existed before being struck down: (1) Electoral bonds carried the name of the buyer to ensure transparency. (2) Bonds could be used only for donations to parties securing at least 1% of votes polled in the last general election. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) Neither 1 nor 2

• (b) Both 1 and 2

• (c) 1 only

• (d) 2 only

Q16. The concept of a 'wave election,' as explained by Paul Brass in the context of Indian voting behaviour, refers to:

• (a) An election decided purely by caste calculations

• (b) An election where a single national tendency, driven by an issue transcending local factors, sweeps uncommitted voters in one direction

• (c) An election marked by extremely low voter turnout

• (d) An election where regional parties always defeat national parties

Q17. Which of the following elections is cited as an illustration of the anti-incumbency factor influencing Indian voting behaviour?

• (a) The 2004 general election result alone

• (b) The victory of the Congress Party in the 1971 general election

• (c) The 1957 general election

• (d) The defeat of the Congress Party in the 1977 general election

Q18. Psephology, the scientific study of voting behaviour, derives its name from the classical Greek term for:

• (a) A voting assembly hall

• (b) A ballot box

• (c) A piece of pottery used for inscribing votes

• (d) A political speech

Mains Practice Questions

Use these to frame full-length answers. You don't have to answer one exactly — they show the angles UPSC tests, so let them guide which points you cover.

• Discuss the major recommendations of the Dinesh Goswami Committee (1990) and examine how they were implemented in the 1996 electoral reforms.

• Trace the evolution of candidate-disclosure requirements in Indian elections, from the 2003 affidavit order to the present.

• Examine the introduction and significance of NOTA and VVPAT as electoral reforms since 2010.

• "The Electoral Bonds Scheme was struck down as unconstitutional in 2024." Discuss the Supreme Court's reasoning and its implications for political funding transparency.

• Discuss the determinants of voting behaviour in India, with reference to caste, religion, region and anti-incumbency.

• Examine the significance of the study of voting behaviour (psephology) in understanding Indian democracy.