Democracy Cohort on Election Integrity

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Summit for Democracy- Relevance for UPSC Exam

GS Paper 2: International Relations- Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.

As part of ‘Summit for Democracy’, a decision has been taken to request India to lead the ‘Democracy Cohort on Election Integrity’ and share its knowledge, technical expertise and experiences with other democracies of the world.
ECI has been requested to also provide-
- Training and capacity building programmes to Election Management Bodies (EMBs) across the world and
- Technical consultancy as per needs of other EMBs.

About: Democracy Cohort platform is a thematic, multi-stakeholder group, open for official government and civil society participation.
Themes: Few themes to be discussed under democracy cohort platform in the Summit for Democracy initiative are-
- Election Integrity,
- Free and Independent media,
- Fighting corruption,
- Bolstering democratic reformers,
- Advancing technology for democracy,
- Digital governance,
- Inclusive democracy,
- Disinformation,
- Anti-discrimination, etc.
Significance: These Democracy Cohorts would refine Summit’s commitments, demonstrate progress on implementing those commitments, and develop new commitments for the follow up Summit.

About: The Summit for Democracy is an initiative the US President with an aim to “renew the spirit and shared purpose” of the nations of the Free World.
- Global Summit for Democracy is to be an annual summit. Summit for Democracy 2022 is expected to be an in-person meeting.
Key Objective: Global Summit for Democracy aims to bring together the world’s democracies-
- To strengthen their democratic institutions,
- Honestly confront the challenge of nations that are backsliding, and
- Forge a common agenda to address threats to our common values.
Key Themes of Democratic Summit: Global Summit for Democracy will be held around three themes:

1. Defending against authoritarianism,
2. Fighting corruption,
3. Promoting respect for human rights.

Participation: This virtual Democratic Summit envisages the participation of leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector.
- The invitees from the Asia-Pacific region to the Democratic Summit 2021 included India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Pakistan, Maldives, and the Philippines.
- Countries like China and Bangladesh were not invited to the first Summit for Democracies.

About: The ECI is an autonomous constitutional authority responsible for administering Union and State election processes in India.
Mandate: The Election body administers elections to the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, and State Legislative Assemblies in India, and the offices of the President and Vice President in the country.

Part XV of the Indian constitution: deals with elections, and establishes a commission for these matters.
Article 324 to 329 of the constitution: deals with powers, function, tenure, eligibility, etc. of the commission and the member.

Articles related to Elections
324	Superintendence, direction, and control of elections to be vested in an Election Commission.
325	No person to be ineligible for inclusion in, or to claim to be included in a special, electoral roll on grounds of religion, race, caste, or sex.
326	Elections to the House of the People and to the Legislative Assemblies of States to be on the basis of adult suffrage.
327	Power of Parliament to make provision with respect to elections to Legislatures.
328	Power of Legislature of a State to make provision with respect to elections to such Legislature.
329	Bar to interference by courts in electoral matters.