India being an ex-colony of Britain, has imbibed its political structure from the Westminster style of Parliamentary Democracy. Though there are a lot of similarities the election process has its share of differences as well.
Similarities
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Both are parliamentary democracies
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India has shaped its lower house after the House of Commons
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Both have the First-Past-the-Post, FPTP, model of elections into the lower house of parliament, based on territorial constituencies
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Both are multiparty democracies
Differences
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The election dates are fixed by the Election Commission in India whereas the elections have fixed dates in England
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Ballot boxes are used in England whereas electronic voting machined have been put to use in India since 1998
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The size of the lower house and the constituency differ from those of India, the House of Commons has 650 MPs each elected by an constituency of 70,000 voters, whereas India has 543 MPs each elected by constituency of 1.6 million voters
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Since elections have seen more time in England there is definitely more trust in the system, no voter cards, markings on the fingers are used. In India we face a huge electorate and certain precautions need to be taken
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In England there are still complains that Ballot papers do not reach certain booths on time, this is not the case in India where the Election Commission makes sure that EVMs are distributed even in the remote corners and areas threatened by Left Wing extremism
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The process of elections in the U.K, unlike India, is not threatened with violence, booth capturing, rigging and abuse of money
While FPTP System is relatively inexpensive, easy to administer and suitable with a huge electorate like India, it has come under sever scrutiny because of the following reasons:
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There are a number of constituencies where the candidate polling less than 50% is declare winner. However, the results don’t reflect on the preferences of more than 50% of the electorate.
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This consequently, creates a distortion between the votes polled by a party and the seats it secures in the legislature. While BSP with vote share 4% has no seats, TMC with 3.8% has 34 seats.
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Further, FPTP may not be suitable for representation of minorities etc.
An answer to these anomalies has been PR which is more representative of the electorate especially w.r.t minorities, women, regional groups etc. However, it may lead to greater divisions and polarization. Further, this may lead to unstable government which is antithetical in a developing country like India. Also, in a country like India this may aggravate the menace of criminalization in politics because of lower threshold to get elected.
The answer to a country like India is Semi Proportional System as recommended by Law commission in 170th report which tried to combine
Compare and contrast the election process to their respective parliaments in India and the United Kingdom. Considering recent elections in UK and India, do you think the first-past-the-post system of election should be replaced with proportional representation system? Examine. (200 Words)