Free India After Independence: 1947-2000 by Bipan Chandra Page B

the President to continue till the new one is in place.
    A new constitutional controversy arose with the refusal of the BJP-led government, which was voted out of office on 17 April 1999, to act in the spirit of a caretaker as has been the convention. Despite protests by opposition parties, the government rejected any notion of caretaker status with the argument that there is no such provision in the Constitution. However it is arguable that this stance ignores well-established practice and is self-serving. The Chief Election Commissioner’s advice to the government that it should act keeping in mind that the country is already in election mode even though the statutory period of restraint has not yet begun also fell on deaf years. (Though the Lok Sabha was dissolved in April 1999, fresh elections were delayed till September and October due to the monsoon and revision of electoral rolls.) The government at one stroke transferred eight secretary-level (the highest rank in the bureaucracy) officials, including the Home Secretary, who is responsible for law and order, on 3 May 1999, after the Lok Sabha had been dissolved. This, despite the fact that one of the most important conventions evolved for ensuring fair elections is that officials are not transferred once elections are announced. Sadly, the letter of the Constitution is being used to defy constitutional practice.
The Parliament
    The Indian parliament has two houses—the upper house being called the Rajya Sabha or the Council of States and the lower house the Lok Sabha or the House of the People. The Rajya Sabha has 250 members, of whom 238 are elected by elected members of the state legislative assemblies or Vidhan Sabhas via a system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote, while another 12 are nominated by the President, on the advice of the government, to represent different fields such aseducation, social work, media, sports, etc. Every two years, one-third of the members of the Rajya Sabha retire; but individual members’ terms are for six years, so that the Rajya Sabha is a permanent body. The Vice-President of India is the chairperson and a deputy chairperson is elected by Rajya Sabha members from amongst themselves.
    The Lok Sabha is directly elected by the people for five years. It may be dissolved before its term is over. In case an Emergency is in force, the Lok Sabha can extend its term for one year at a time but not beyond six months after the Emergency has ended. In practice, only once has the Lok Sabha’s term been extended for a year in 1976 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared the Emergency.
    All Indian citizens, eighteen or above, are eligible to vote. The winning candidate is the one that is first past the post, that is, the one who gets the maximum number of votes. There is no rule that the winner must get at least 50 per cent of the votes, as is the practice in many other countries, though many thoughtful observers have been urging that this system is adopted to ensure the representative nature of the candidate elected and encourage candidates to look beyond vote-banks to wider sections of voters. There is no proportional representation.
    Constituencies are territorial and single-member, and divided among states roughly in proportion to the population. A certain number are reserved for Scheduled Tribes and Castes in proportion to their population in that particular state. This means that if, say, in Andhra Pradesh, 40 per cent of the population is Scheduled Castes and 10 per cent Scheduled Tribes, then in 40 per cent of Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh only Scheduled Caste candidates can contest and in another 10 per cent only Scheduled Tribe candidates can contest. All the voters residing in that constituency would elect these candidates—there are no separate electorates as there were before independence.
    In recent years, pressure has built up for reservation of one-third of constituencies for women and