New Delhi: The CPM yesterday called for radical electoral reforms, saying the BJP was winning legislative majorities with just a third or less percentage of popular support.
This was due to the anomalies of the ‘first-past-the post’ system in elections, the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in an editorial in its journal “People’s Democracy”.
This called for “radical changes in our electoral system, including, moving towards a proportional representation through, may be, initially, a ‘partial proportional representation’ system practiced in several Western democracies today,” it said.
“The BJP seems to be by now perfecting the art of securing for itself a majority, under multi-polar electoral contests while receiving a third or less percentage of people’s support,” the editorial said.
“It won a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha polling just 31 percent of the votes cast.
“In Haryana, it has now won a majority by polling 33 percent of the polled vote. In Maharashtra, it has won 123 seats polling only 29 percent,” it said. “The results of these state assemblies have, again, underlined the urgency to initiate such reforms to strengthen our system of parliamentary democracy and make it truly democratic - rule of the majority.
“Instead, we now have continuously at the centre and in a majority of states, a situation when parties/coalitions control the government polling less votes in their favour than the votes polled against them. “Such a distortion of democracy needs urgent correction,” it said.
IANS
