It is a mere British legacy, clung onto even today only by former British colonies with bulk of the democracies in the Europe, untouched by British influence, plumping for the admittedly more equitable proportional representation system.

By S Murlidharan

Constitutional experts as well as a large sections of the intelligentsia in India agree that the invidious first past the post system (FPPS) should be junked and proportional representation system embraced.

Under the FPPS, a political party with hardly 30% of the popular mandate can hog the lion’s share of seats in an electoral body including the Lok Sabha, in what can be called the political version of more bang for bucks. Indeed the FPPS makes a travesty of democracy.

To wit, if the Congress gets 30% of votes in a constituency and all other candidates in fray have each polled less than this percentage, the Congress party candidate would be declared the winner. The Congress has been winning Lok Sabha elections right from Nehru's time thanks to the invidious system of FPPS.

In a divided polity evidenced by multiplicity of parties, this is the most likely denouement — a person who has not been voted by the majority, but who gets the maximum number of votes is declared elected nevertheless. Lumpy votes suffice. In other words, a party in a given constituency can rest assured and take comfort from the fact that while it has only say 30% support, others would fare worse though they all add up to the remaining 70%.

The dawning realisation that split votes were benefiting the Congress Party was the glue that brought disparate political elements in 1977 together, hot on the heels of emergency. Consolidation of opposition votes happened under the Janata party experiment that romped home in the 1977 elections on the back of direct one to one contest against the Congress and riding the popular wave of resentment against the Congress party’s highhandedness during the infamous emergency.

The lumpy vote phenomenon has not benefited the Congress party alone; it has benefited even the opposition notably the regional parties. Small wonder, no political party is keen on abandoning it despite its manifest inequity. Be that as it may, but the moot question is whether it is sacrosanct. The answer is no. It is a mere British legacy, clung onto even today only by former British colonies with bulk of the democracies in the Europe, untouched by British influence, plumping for the admittedly more equitable proportional representation system.

How then has it come to stay in India? To be sure, the Indian Constitution does not mandate it. A perusal of the constitutional provision relating to the Parliament as well as state assemblies and those relating to the Election Commission (EC) show that far from being mandated, there is not even a reference to FPPS. The EC is mandated by article 324 to among others conduct elections, period.

Why can’t it then junk the system of FPPS, another relic of the British Raj? To be sure, the Constituent Assembly had an animated discussion on the two variants of democratic voting — FPPS and proportional representation — but consciously perhaps chose to leave it to the incumbent EC at the relevant time in the hope that it would exercise its judgment properly and change over to the proportional representation system when it was the appropriate time.

The preponderance of speakers felt proportional representation was a system whose time had not come then in India. It was felt that it would kill regional aspirations given the fact that under the party-list system of proportional representation commonly adopted, the entire nation is considered as one homogenous entity with people voting for the party rather than for the individual candidates.

In the event, Congress with 30% vote share would get 30% of the Lok Sabha seats and the BJP with say 25% vote share would get only 25% of the Lok Sabha seats. The regional parties might have performed very well in their pocket boroughs, as it were, but their vote share of the national pie would be miniscule. The bottom line would be few seats for them as against the bountiful harvest under the FPPS under which the focus is on each constituency and not on the entire nation.

This could be a genuine reason for their opposition to the proportional representation system, but the answer lies in tweaking it to suit our own needs. A Sui generis proportional representation system designed by the EC would address their concerns — view a state as the oyster instead of viewing the nation.

In other words, proportional representation system should focus on share of votes of the state pie and not of the national pie. Thus if RJD polls 30% in Bihar, it should get 30% of the seats coming from that state to the Lok Sabha. Even this may not entirely satisfy the regional parties, but in that case they would be protesting over much which should not be paid heed to.

In the pristine proportional representation system they would be fobbed off with at best a seat or two. They must thank their stars that under the proposed tweaked system, they would fare much better but nowhere near their undeserved performances under the irrational FPPS.

If the EC feels hesitant to junk the existing system for the fear of rocking the political boat too much then the Supreme Court may be pleased to intervene and give directions to it as it has been doing lately taking advantage of the fact that our constitution makers had chosen not to cast the issue in stone or straightjacket it.

It has directed the EC to make guidelines on freebies in the run-up to elections. More recently, it has directed the EC to give the NOTA (none of the above candidates) option on the ballot paper, electronic or paper. The directive canvassed herein would be in sync with the Supreme Court’s earnest zeal in cleansing the Augean stables.

In its wake, parties would field better candidates because individual popularity would not be the issue at all. Instead it would be all about parties and their policies. The saddest casualty would of course be independents. But they may have to join some party or the other that comes closest to meeting their expectations in terms of policies espoused and causes championed.

Parenthetically it may be pointed out that proportional representation is what the doctor has ordered for corporate democracy as well. But companies in India have all along cold shouldered an enabling regime in the Companies Act, 1956 that is entirely optional.

The new Companies Act, 2012 that has replaced the 1956 Act meekly continues this optional regime. Proportional representation on boards should be made the norm, mandatory. A group controlling 51% of the shares should get only 51% representation on the board of directors. Now thanks to the present system of voting in of individual directors, the 51% group gets to hog the entire board with its own nominees thus warranting subversive practices like foreign collaborators, with say 26% equity stakes, writing a veto power for themselves in the shareholders’ agreement.

Veto power is anathema to any democracy. It is amazing that it continues to be wielded by select five countries for ages in the United Nation’s Security Council.