We take great pride in the fact that our country India is the biggest democracy in the world.  When an election is held in India, the entire world watches in eager anticipation.  Many countries in the World are in awe of our democratic set up and they consider Democracy in India as the benchmark.

Some countries in the world have a  Presidential set up, wherein Present is given the entire powers and more often that not the people have to bear the brunt of dictatorship.  There are few countries which even today are ruled by Kings.  If you compare our democratic set up we have a far better system than other countries in the world.

However there are some flaws in our system which needs to be looked into.  We know well in advance who is our candidate for a particular party to whom we are going to vote.  These days thanks to information on the web, we are also aware of our candidate's credentials as to how clean he is, or how many criminal cases or corruption cases are filed against them.  The information system also let us know as to how many parties the candidates have defected to in their career.

However there is one very important information for which we do not have access to.  The political parties do not declare their Chief Ministerial or Prime Ministerial candidate in advance as  in the  current system Chief Minister or Prime Minister is selected by the MLAs or MPs after the election.  The flaw in the current system is that the Chief Minister or Prime Minister need not necessarily be chosen on merit by the MLAs or MPs.  The selection could be either for the sake of convenience or internal political compulsions to accommodate a person.  It could also be just for the sake of honoring some unofficial  pre poll committments not informed to the public in advance.

In this regard a ammendment is required in our electoral system, wherein political parties need to declare the name of their Chief Miniesterial's and Prime Ministerial candidates well before the election so as to enable us to cast our vote to a person under whose govervance we feel secure.

Regards

Satish