The Indian Political System

INDIAN LEGISLATURE

India is the second largest democracy in the world. The Indian legislature is bicameral i.e. the Indian Parliament is made up of the Lower House – Lok Sabha, and the Upper House – Rajya Sabha and President.

INDIAN JUDICIARY

Salient Features

1.	The Constitution contains provisions related to the Union Judiciary in Articles 124–127.
2.	Supreme Court is the apex court of India. Supreme Court has 26 judges including the Chief Justice. The salary of the Chief Justice is Rs.33000 per month and each judge gets Rs. 30000 per month. The retirement age of the judges of the Supreme Court is 65 years.
3.	High Courts are at the top of hiearchy in the State Judicial System. Presently there are 21 High Courts in the country. The retirement age of the judges of a High Court is 62 years.

States and Union Territories

•	Article 3 authorises the Parliament, by a majority vote, to establish or eliminate State and Union Territories.
•	India has 28 States and 7 Union Territories.
•	Article 370 provides special status to Jammu and Kashmir in the Consititution.
•	Article 256 and 257 require States to comply with the governor, who is appointed by the President.
•	The eligibility for appointment as Governor is that he is a citizen of India and has completed the age of thirty-five years and he should not hold any other office of profit.
•	The Governor of a state has the power to grant pardons, reprieves or remissions of punishment or to remit or compute the sentence of any person relating to a matter to which the executive power of the State extends.
•	The term of the governor is five years unless dismissed by the president or resignation.
•	In 6 of India’s 28 state (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharastra, Jammu & Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh) the legislative council serves as the upper houses of a bicameral legislature.
•	Where there are two houses of the Legislature of a State, one is known as the Legislative Council and the other as the Legilative Assembly, and where there is only one House, it is known as the Legislative Assembly.
•	There is a Council of Ministers with the Chief Minister as the head to aid and advice the Governor in the exercise of his functions.
•	The Legislative Assembly of each state shall consist of not more than five hundred, and not less than sixty members chosen by direct election. (except Sikkim)
•	The Central government distributes taxes and grants-in-aid to States through the decision of the Finance Commission, stipulated in Article 275. The president constitutes the Finance Commission at the expiry of 5 years.
•	The central Government also distributes grants to States through the development plans prepared by the Planning Commission.
•	Union Territories are administered by the President through the administrator who is appointed by President. President may appoint the Goveror of a state as the administrator of an adjoining Union Territory.

CAG

•	The powers and duties of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) are described in Articles 149 and 150. He has three main functions: (1) to audit government’s expenditure; (2) to see that the financial rules are obeyed; and (3) to see the sanction of expenditure.
•	Under Article 151, reports of the CAG relating to the Union are submitted to the President, those relating to the states are submitted to the Governor. These are to be a placed before Parliament and State Legislature respectively.

Elections

•	Under Article 327, Parliament is vested with the Supreme power to legislate on all matters relating to elections, including election State legislatures. The States have also been vested with certain limited powers of legislation with respect to elections, Under Article 328. But such legislation should not be in conflict with any parlimentary.
•	One of the outstanding features of the Consitution is adult suffrage. Every person who is not less than 18 years of the age has the right to vote in the election to the House of the People and the State Legislative Party. The only grounds for disqualifications are: () non residence (ii) unsoundness of mind, (iii) crime, and (iv) corrupt or illegal practice, Article 325 says that no person will be ineligible for inclusion in, or to claim to be included in special, electoral roll on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.
•	Article 324 provides that the superintendence, direction and control of election in India to be vested in and Election Commission. According to the 19th Amendment, the provisions of constituting election tribunals have been abolished. Election petitions are now heard by the High Court in appeals. Article 339, however, bars interference by courts in electoral matters. State election commission conducts election of corporations, municipalities and other local bodies.

THE ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA

The Election Commission of India is an autonomous constitutional body created to conduct free and fair elections for the representative bodies in India. It was established on January 25, 1950.

The Constitution of India has vested in the Election Commission of India the superintendence, direction and control of the entire process for the conduct of elections for the Parliament and the Legislature of every State and for the offices of the President and the Vice-President of India.The law which governs all the elections in India as mentioned above is the Representation of People Act, 1950.

The Commission presently consists of a Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners. Originally, however, the Commission had just one Chief Commissioner. Two Commissioners were appointed for the first time on October 16, 1989 but their tenure lasted only till January 1, 1990.
On October 1, 1993, two additional Election Commissioners were appointed. The commission has followed the multi-member structure since then, with decisions taken by a majority vote.

The Election Commission has a Secretariat at New Delhi consisting of about 300 officials.

INDIAN DEFENCE

The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. It is on his behalf that the Defence Minister looks after all the matters concerning the Defence Services. The Defence Minister is responsible to the Parliament for all matters concerning the Defence. However, the responsibility of national defence rests with the Cabinet of Ministers. The three services of Defence i.e. Army, Navy and Air Force, function under their respective Chief of Staff.

Army
Indian Army is responsible for the defence and security of India’s territorial area. The Army is organised into five operational commmands – Northern, Eastern, Western, Central and Southern and one Training Command – each headed by a Commander-in-Chief of the rank of Lieutenant General. The Army, with its headquarter at New Delhi, consists of a number of services such as armoured corps, regiment of artillery, engineer corps, infantry, army services corps, army medical corps, intelligence corps, etc. The Chief of the Army is of the designation General and is answerable to the Defence Minister.

Navy
The Indian Navy is responsible for the defence and security of the Indian water. The Navy is organised into three operational commands – Western, Eastern, and Southern – headquartered at Mumbai, Vishakhapatnam, and Cochin respectively. The Western and the Eastern commands have under them operational fleets like warships, submarines, aircrafts and other support ships. The Southern Naval Command is responsible for all the training activities of the Navy. The designation of The Chief of the Navy is Admiral and he is answerable to the Defence Minister.

Air Force
The Indian Air Force is responsible for the defence and security of the Indian airspace. The fourth largest Air Force in the World, it is organised into five operational commands – Western Command, South-Western Command, Central Air Command, Eastern Air Command, and Southern Air Command and two functional commands - a Maintainance and a Training command. It is headquartered at New Delhi. The designation of The Chief of the Air Force is Air Chief Marshall and he is answerable to the Defence Minister