Describe the challenges to free and fair elections in India.

The challenges to free and fair elections in India are given below:
(i) Use of money power: Elections in India has become a very costly affair. Generally, a candidate in the Lok Sabha election spends about ₹50 lakh to one crore. They do not abide by the ceiling prescribed under the law. Rich candidates generally enjoy a big and unfair advantage over smaller parties and poor candidates.
(ii) Use of muscle power: Muscle power is used to force the voters to vote for particular” candidate or not allowing the voters to vote, and for capturing the booth and casting bogus votes.
(iii) Criminalisation of politics : Many candidates contest ng the elections have criminal connections. According to former Election Commissioner G.V.G. Krishnamurthy, in 1990, Lok Sabha elections, 1,500 out of 3,952 candidates for tire Lok Sabha had criminal record.
(iv) Dominance of families: Sometimes tickets are distributed to relatives from some families which dominate political parties. Ordinary members are generally ignored due to one reason or the other.
(v) No choice to ordinary voters/citizens : Very often elections offer little choice to ordinary citizens because the major parties are quite similar to each other both in policies and practice.
(vi) Disadvantages to smaller parties and independent candidates : Suffer parties
and independent candidates suffer a huge disadvantage in comparison to big parties because
they can use their manpower as well as money in the election. The above challenges exist not only in India but in most of the modern democracies.Thai is why the supporters of democracy are demanding electoral and political reforms in the electoral system to overcome these challenges.