However, although we may justly pride ourselves on the successful conclusion of this massive electoral exercise we should pause and reflect on whether the outcome truly reflects the national will. There are many reasons to be dissatisfied with – indeed alarmed at – the conduct of Indian elections. Do the results express the will of the people? First we have to define what “people” means in this context. It merely refers to those who went to the polling stations on the days of the elections and found their names on the electoral rolls so that they could vote. This procedure is subject to two types of errors – including those that should be excluded and excluding those that should be included. The former group includes the hordes of Bangaldeshi nationals who live in various parts of the Northeast and some eastern states. These people are not Indian citizens but are economic migrants from Bangladesh. The previous government had estimated that there are large numbers of such people in India and was planning to deport 15 million of them. Some parties in power now are openly talking of adopting a “humane” approach to this problem. Surely this is just a cover for using these people as a vote bank and a not so concealed effort to politicize even the Electoral Rolls. (How these people are able to get their names in the Electoral Rolls is for the Election Commission to answer). The latter error includes the millions of bona fide Indians who did not find their names on the electoral rolls and were thus denied the right to exercise their franchise. We read about some prominent such cases in the newspapers but surely many, many more have gone unreported. The various polling agencies, which were proved to be wrong in their forecasts of the election results, can partially redeem themselves by providing reasonable estimates of these two types of errors to the Election Commission. An important question looms increasingly large – who has the right to vote in India? The Election Commission must answer this satisfactorily if it is to have any legitimacy.

Second, were the people certain about how their votes would be transformed into a government? Parties that were vehemently opposed to each other during the election campaign have now teamed together to form the government. Is this an expression of the people’s will? The Election Commission imposes a model pre poll Code of Conduct on political parties as soon as the election schedule is announced. It should also require these political parties to announce all their potential allies in government formation in case of a fractured verdict. The Commission should then publicly advertise such pledges to the voters so that they can make an informed choice. Anything less would imply that the verdict of the voter has been hijacked.

Third, the quality of the candidate is important. Just because a person has been elected according to India’s flawed electoral process should not give him/her the legitimacy to become a parliamentarian. This is most vividly and poignantly illustrated in respect of various alleged criminals who have found new havens in political parties and have even been appointed to eminent positions. Do the people of India deserve such representatives? Had the Founding Fathers of the Constitution envisaged a situation such as that which prevails in India today they would have incorporated strong regulations about the necessary quality of candidates contesting elections. A consensus has to be built to prevent such people from contesting elections in the first place. Surely if chargesheeted persons are ineligible for government jobs government bureaucrats should not have chargesheeted bosses as ministers.