The Central Legislature in British India, 192147. Mohammad Rashiduzzaman

      It was recommended in the M/C Report that “special electorates” would be required for representation of the plantation and mining interests and chambers of Commerce.³² One main justification for more special electorates for commerce and industry was to bring in some members with specialized knowledge in those fields. In the Legislative Council under the Morley-Minto Reforms, there were only two elected commerce seats. While recommending a larger number of seats for commerce and industry, the Southborough Committee pointed out that elections through associations had worked well in the ← 40 | 41 → past and should therefore be recommended for the future.³³ The commercial constituencies were associational instead of being territorial like other general constituencies. Since the introduction of the Reforms, there was a growing demand for more legislators speaking for Indian and European Commerce. But it became a debatable issue. The demand was driven on the assumption that representation of commerce and industry could not be obtained through general territorial constituencies. Special seats for European commerce were stressed as the European businessmen were reluctant to stand for election by mixed European and Indian voters.³⁴

      There were, however, numerous arguments put forward against special representation of commerce and industry. Firstly, there were several businessmen in the Assembly as well as the Council of State elected through ordinary territorial constituencies. So the separate representation for their interests was excessive. The proceedings of the Central Legislature also revealed that the House did not face any dearth of expert opinion when the commerce and industry matters were debated on the floor.³⁵ Secondly, a common objection was that special representations created a cleavage among the non-official members in the House as well as the larger electorate. Potentially, it also encouraged those representatives to ascertain issues from their respective narrow and selfish points of views. The minute of dissent to the Franchise Committee (Lothian) Report pointed out that members elected by special electorates might not be able to make “a wholly dispassionate examination of particular economic issues.”³⁶ Thirdly, the idea of granting separate electorates for European Commercial bodies was criticized as superfluous. Furthermore, the note of dissent to the Lothian Committee argued that no separate European electorates should be created and in each province all associations representing commerce, trade and industry should be combined into one special commercial constituency for election purposes.³⁷ But the Committee (a majority of the members) found it unacceptable and the existing separate European representation was recommended “until a mutual understanding was reached.”³⁸ The procedure of conducting the elections was very much the same as in the Western countries. If the number of candidates nominated was greater than the number of vacancies in a particular constituency, a poll was taken.³⁹ But in case the number of such candidates was equal to the number of vacant seats, all the candidates were declared to be elected.⁴⁰

      Votes were given by secret ballot and in general constituencies in person subject to one exception: the Viceroy in Council or local government of a province could direct in certain special cases that votes might be given ← 41 | 42 → otherwise than in person.⁴¹ In practice, voting by post was only allowed for the Council of State elections. Voting by proxy was illegal in all circumstances. In the plural member constituencies, every elector held as many votes as there were members to be elected but no elector could give more than one vote to any one candidate except in the presidency of Bombay where any elector could accumulate his votes upon one candidate or distribute them amongst candidates as he pleased.⁴² An exception to this rule was also made in the Bengal European constituency where the election held according to the principle of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote.

      Votes were counted by or under the supervision of the Returning Officer, and each candidate, his election agent and one representative of each candidate had a right to be present at the time of counting.⁴³ When the counting of votes was completed, the Returning Officer forthwith declared the candidate or candidates, as the case might be, to whom the largest number of votes was given, to be elected.⁴⁴ When an equality of votes existed between candidates and the addition of one entitled, any of the candidates to be declared elected. On such exceptional circumstances, the determination of the person or persons to whom such an additional vote should be given was decided by a lottery to be drawn in the presence of the Returning Officer.⁴⁵ The Returning Officer used to send the result of election as soon as possible to the Secretary of the Legislative Department, Government of India; and later, the names of the successful candidates were published in the Gazette.

      Part VII of the Electoral Rules and Regulations gave various details of dealing with the corrupt practices in elections. There was also a special legislation⁴⁶ providing for criminal punishment of certain election offences. The malpractices in connection with elections were bribery, treating (giving food or conveyance or entertainment to induce anybody to vote), undue influence or impersonation at an election, false statements or illegal payment in connection with an election and failure to keep election accounts.⁴⁷ To try election disputes, the Governor-General appointed an Election Tribunal consisting of three Commissioners who could declare any election of a returned candidate null and void if they found that any of the offences affected it.⁴⁸ All the records of election disputes from 1921 to 1945 were not available. However Hammond’s volume on election cases from 1921 to 1935 revealed that only 11 disputes were concerned with the Assembly and Council of State elections. Most of those disputes were concerned with inaccuracies in nomination and ballot papers, the powers of Returning Officers and mistakes in counting. There were only three cases dealing with the ← 42 | 43 → publication of false statements and improper voting impersonation. There was no case of bribery. In 1935, the election of Ebrahim Haroon Jaffer as a member of the Assembly was declared void as he was found guilty of publishing false statements against his rival.⁴⁹ There was a common feature in all these disputes. In every case, the petitioner was defeated by marginal votes. It might be suggested that the candidates defeated by marginal votes wanted to take a second chance by filing a case on the plea that the election was unduly influenced by corrupt practices. In five cases out of eleven, the elections were declared void.

      Alleged corrupt practices in elections were discussed from time to time in the Central Legislature. An important debate was held in the Council of State on the 27th February, 1935 when Raja Ghaznafar Ali strongly urged the Government to take the earliest steps to get rid of various malpractices in elections.⁵⁰ Among other issues, he pointed out the following corrupt practices:

      a. impersonation

      b. entertaining the voters and,

      c. excessive election expenditure.

      He emphasized the malpractices were more often found in the Punjab. He said: “My experience is that some candidates spend thousands of rupees nearing a lakh on their elections. Most campaign money was spent on providing conveyances, motor cars, lorries etc. for the voters and also providing food for them when they come to the polling stations.”⁵¹ Disproportionate expenditure was an offence as the Governor-General always fixed the maximum scales of election expenses and the amount was returned to the successful candidate. Giving food and providing conveyance was a matter of controversy. While discussing the above resolution, some non-official members pointed out that in rural areas some provision should be made to provide conveyance as the voters had to travel a long distance. On the 28th March, 1936, there was another discussion in the Assembly about election malpractices. Sardar Saran Singh alleged that a few polling officers were “actually purchased by the candidates” and the voting scratch was little more than the pleasure of the officer who marked the ballot