As the world celebrated 11th International Day of Democracy, on Saturday, a symposium on 'Challenges to Indian Electoral Democracy was organised by Vijay Dev, Chief Election Commissioner (CEO) of Delhi at India Habitat Centre.

Speaking on the occasion, OP Rawat, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) India said, “There has been so much noise about electronic voting machines (EVMs) or the misuse of social media platforms and about all kinds of ills. All these things affect elections.  With this, legitimacy of leadership and elections suffers.” These are the challenges to Indian Electoral Democracy, he added.

The address was followed by a panel discussion on the issue. The panellist Dr SY Quraishi, former Chief Election Commissioner, addressed media by saying, “In 1940, we had only 11 Parliamentary democracies across the world, now we have 23, which is not a big number.”

Quoting his article on the same issue in a leading newspaper today, he said, “South Asia is home to 3 per cent of the world's area and 21 per cent of the world's population.”

He added by saying that it is significant that 50 per cent of the world's population living under some form of democratic rule resides in this region. He further said that in India, we have positive picture but in other democracies we do have this privilege.

Delhi CEO Vijay Dev said that even though EC has done superb job in smooth conduct of polls of colossal magnitude, we have lot to do. “We have to rise to the expectations of citizens in terms of decriminalising the politics, eradicating influences of bribery and inducements, ensuring transparency in the funding of political parties, ensuring inner party democracy, creating level playing field between independents vs parties and between party in power vs other parties and finally making ECI a fearless impartial electoral watchdog. These are the challenge, Dev said.

“While every channel and newspaper gives much importance to February 14, the Valentine's Day, I would say the real day is today. Today is a very beautiful day,” another panellist, Dushyant Dave, Senior advocate of Supreme Court said.

There is very little discussion about the day in media and common people, which is the real problem, he further said.

Apart from them, the other were, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, senior journalist, Justice JD Kapoor, former judge, Delhi High Court and Niranjan Sahoo, senior research fellow.