In our representative democracy, the political party or alliance of parties which secures the majority of seats forms the government and rules the nation for the specific term. The remaining parties or alliance or alliances of parties together function as the opposition. Just as the members of the ruling party or alliance represent the voice of those who elected them, the members of the opposition parties also represent the voice of their electors, though the latter group is not a part of the government. Thus, all the candidates, irrespective of whether they belong to the ruling party/alliance or the opposition parties/alliance, are the representatives of the people, who are considered as supreme in a democratic system of government. This pre-supposes that no party or no member of any party including any opposition party can be denied an opportunity to express its/his/her views and opinions in the Parliament or the Assembly. If such denial happens, the resultant imbalance creates an insurmountable gap between the ideal and the implementation of representative democracy. Or in other words, the representation by a member, who is denied the opportunity to speak, becomes meaningless and the system would not conform to the norms of a representative democracy.
These thoughts have been prompted by a few happenings in the country. Any apolitical citizen in all probability would feel concerned about the above mentioned issue.
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