Regulating the Electoral Domain: The Election Commission of India
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019556118788497 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
64(3) 518–530
© 2018 IIPA
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0019556118788497
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ipa
1 Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
2 Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Corresponding author:
Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
E-mail: ujjwalksingh@gmail.com
Regulating the Electoral
Domain: The Election
Commission of India
Ujjwal Kumar Singh1
Anupama Roy2
Abstract
The Election Commission of India (ECI) is generally seen as a regulatory body
with the power to enforce rules for the efficient conduct of elections. The ECI
performs a range of overlapping functions, not all of which are regulatory. The
ECI has been actively engaged in framing rules that constitute both the procedural
and substantive aspects of electoral democracy in India. Following successive court
decisions, Article 324 has become a ‘reservoir of powers’ giving the ECI scope for
the exercise of residuary powers in a variety of situations. The ‘legal doctrine of
electoral exceptionalism’ during election time has made itself manifest in the Model
Code of Conduct. Innovations in ‘voter education and awareness’, which are often
seen through the lens of electoral ‘management’ and the framework of ‘electoral
integrity’, have become part of the deliberative content of election alongside the
quest for ‘procedural certainty’ and ‘democratic outcomes’.
Keywords
Electoral legal exceptionalism, electoral integrity, procedural certainty, SVEEP,
Model Code of Conduct
Introduction
Regulatory authorities are generally construed as autonomous bodies having the
power to enforce rules to ensure conflict-free relationships within an institutional
matrix to maintain the dynamism of a system. For some time now, especially since
the 1990s, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been seen as a regulatory
body which performs a set of rule enforcement functions pertaining to the conduct
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