Syllabus: GS-II, Subject: Polity, Topic: Elections and RPA, Issue: Free and fair elections
 Free and Fair Elections :
- A part of the basic structure of the constitution.
- Mechanism to hold free and fair elections–
- Election Commission of India ,
- Representation of The People Act (RPA), 1950 and 1951,
- Threat to free and fair election–
- degeneration of institutions (visible in Chandigarh mayor election) and
- communalism
- judiciary has intervened at times to ensure the sanctity of elections.
+1 Advantage for Mains:
| Issue linked to elections | Supreme Court Judgement |
| Degeneration of institutions | Â Kuldeep Kumar vs Union Territory of Chandigarh and Others (Chandigarh Mayor case):
·        Elections at the local participatory level act as a microcosm of the largest democratic structure in the country. ·         Ensuring a free and fair electoral process throughout this process, is imperative to maintain the legitimacy of and trust in representative democracy. ·        Court is duty-bound, to do complete justice to ensure that the process of electoral democracy is not allowed to be thwarted by subterfuges. |
| Secularism | Ziyauddin Burhanuddin Bukhari vs Brijmohan Ramdass Mehra & Ors (1975),
·        Criticized the practice of appealing to voters based on religion. Abhiram Singh vs C.D. Commachen (2017) ·        Wider interpretation to the appeal in the name of religion. ·        held that such an appeal would include even the religion of voters and not merely that of the vote-seeker. |
