One of the recent major events which took place in India was the General Election 2019. We were surrounded by media platforms urging us to cast our vote in the country’s biggest battle for the ballot. We observed a voter turnout of around 63.48 per cent this year.

According to my observations, I feel that a chunk of our population is not fully aware of the basic structure of our government. If we try to understand this structure, we will come to know that we have immense power in our hand. And as with power comes responsibility, it’s our duty to vote for the candidate we feel is right and thus we should also have a basic understanding of our government system. Thus, in my first blog article, I have tried to explain this in a lucid way. So, let’s get started.

Our Constitution provides a federal structure of government. When I say federal, I mean to say that there is a division of power between the central and state governments. The center legislates on topics included in the union list (like defence, foreign affairs), while the subjects mentioned in the state list (like police, health) come within the purview of the state. Laws on the subjects mentioned in the concurrent list (like electricity, labour welfare) can be made by both central and state government. This is unlike the unitary government as in China where the power lies with the central government and the confederal government as in Soviet Union, where there is an option either to follow the central government or to run independently.

Now, both the government at the center and in the states have 3 components – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. This is because India has a representative democracy. Representative democracy has two forms – parliamentary and presidential. In the presidential form of government, power is concentrated in the hands of the president, who is elected directly by the people as in United States of America. India adopted the parliamentary system. In such a system, the power is divided among the three branches of government, namely, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

In the central government, the highest law-making body i.e. India’s union legislature, is known as the Parliament. You might have watched the live telecast of parliamentary affairs. These are actually the sessions which take place at the Parliament House or Sansad Bhavan. The members of the Parliament are known as MPs (Members of Parliament). The Parliament consists of the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of People).

The Lok Sabha is known as the house of the people because its members are directly elected by the people. It can have maximum 552 members and currently there are 545 members, out of which two are Anglo Indian and are nominated by the President. For this purpose, the whole nation is divided into 543 constituencies. These are created on the basis of population; so, the more populous states have more seats. The party which wins more than 50% of Lok Sabha seats forms the government. The leader of that party is elected as the Prime Minister. Normally, the Lok Sabha has three sessions in a year, namely, the Budget Session (February-May), the Monsoon Session (July-August) and the Winter Session (November-December). The Bharataiya Janata Party had a historic landslide victory in Lok Sabha elections this year and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued his second term in the office.

Rajya Sabha, on the other hand, is known as the council of states. Members of Rajya Sabha are elected by the MLA’s of each state through SVT system, who later represent various states and union territories at the centre. It can have upto 250 members. This includes 12 members from amongst distinguished personalities in the country, nominated by the President of India. Each member has a term of six years.

So, basically the upper house or the Rajya Sabha is a representative of the various states in India whereas the Lok Sabha put forth the voice of people of India. The most important work of the MPs is that of making of laws, which implies they need to propose bills on topics covered under union and concurrent list, which after the approval of both the houses is passed and made into an act (after it is signed by the president).

Similarly, at the state level we have two houses at the legislative level. The upper house is known as the Vidhan Parishad. Its members are known as MLC (Members of Legislative Council) and are elected by the MLA’s. The lower house is known as the Vidhan Sabha and its members are known as MLA (Members of Legislative Assembly). These MLAs are elected by the people. They stand from various parts of the state; the party with more than 50% of the seats wins the election and forms the government. The leader of the party becomes the chief minister of the state.

The executive is that part of the government that executes or puts into action the laws passed by the legislature. The union executive consists of political members (like Prime Minister, President, Council of Ministers etc.) and permanent members (like IAS, IPS, IFS Directors etc.). Similarly, at the state level, we have CM, governor etc. at the executive level. The judiciary is the branch of government that upholds the law.

The Union Territories are directly controlled by the central government. An IAS officer or a MP is appointed by the President for its administration. The only exceptions are Delhi and Puducherry which are considered as partial states and thus have its own legislative assembly which is headed by the CM. But still some control is with the central government.

So, it’s time to check the date of the Vidhan Sabha elections of your state so that you can cast your vote for the right candidate. Also, as an informed citizen, it’s your responsibility to keep a track of the various policies and laws made by the current government in these coming five years so that you can take an informed decision in the next General Elections. So, use your right of voting, which is nothing but a basic process to keep a nation’s governmental system under check and to enable us to choose our own representatives so as to bring in the best government for the people of the nation.