Constituency
Topic: Elections and the Electoral System · NCERT: Class 8, Ch 5 "Universal Franchise and India's Electoral System"; Class 9, Ch 7 "Elections"
Meaning
A constituency is an area whose voters elect a representative to a legislature. Under India's first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, each constituency elects one member, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Boundaries are drawn so that each seat has roughly the same population. This matters because it gives every area its own representative, who must answer to the voters there.
Example
The Lok Sabha has 543 constituencies, and each one elects one MP. Of these, 84 are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 47 for Scheduled Tribes. In a reserved constituency, all voters vote, but only an SC or ST candidate may stand.
Don't confuse with
- Electoral roll: this is the list of voters in a constituency. The constituency is the area, and the roll is the list of people in it who may vote.
Related concepts
- First-past-the-post system
- Majority system
- Proportional representation
- List system
- Electoral threshold