As a thriving democracy India has acclaimed fame mostly for its ability to hold continuous free and fair elections since 1951 at national, state and local levels under the supervision of the Election Commission of India. Electoral reforms refer to the changes and suggestions made by the Election Commission to ensure conditions for peaceful polling. The electoral reforms in India have mostly been directed to the political parties and candidates like ensuring model code of conduct, filling of assets, formalizing EVM for polling, etc and are thus political in nature aiming at procedural and technical changes. Dinseh Goswami Committee and Indrajit Gupta Committee reports are considered milestones in these variants of reforms. From 2011 the Election Commission has started to celebrate National Voters Day on 25th January to create awareness among voters, mainly the youths for necessities of voting. NVD has stepped into its third year and registration of new voters is on the rise. Thus this paper tries to view NVD as a new phase of electoral reform that is societal in nature aiming for structural changes where the citizen is placed at the heart of the reform measure.
Election Commission, National Voters’ Day, Electoral Reforms, India
