J Chelameswar, J. - (1.) The petitioner is a registered society under the Societies Registration Act. It is stated in the petition that most of the members of the society are retired civil servants. In the past, some of them have held important constitutional offices and, therefore, they have the requisite locus standi. The genuineness of their concern for the democracy of this country, in our opinion, is beyond any doubt.
(2.) A clean and fair electoral process is a sine qua non for any democracy. Rights and obligations associated with the electoral process, engaged the attention of democratic civil societies and their legislative bodies from time to time. Regulation of the right to vote or the right to contest elections and matters incidental thereto felt necessary. Democratic societies experiment with various modules of electoral processes in response to the felt necessities of the times.
(3.) When our Constitution was adopted, the framers of the Constitution thought that some of the basic norms regarding the electoral process, i.e. rights of voting or the right to contest elections to various bodies established by the Constitution are required to be spelt out in the Constitution itself. Our Constitution, as originally enacted[1], provided for elections to the offices of President, Vice President, membership of the Parliament, consisting two houses, the 'Lok Sabha' and the 'Rajya Sabha'; and the membership of the legislature of the various States, some of them unicameral and some bicameral. Under Article 324[2] an Election Commission was established for the overall superintendence and control of such elections.;