New Delhi: The Union government on Friday announced a committee to explore the possibility of simultaneous polls for the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies, sparking a debate on a fractious issue with far-reaching impact on Indian politics, the Constitution, and federalism.
The announcement of the committee — likely to be headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, according to people aware of the matter — came amid speculation that some legislation to align national and state elections could be introduced in the upcoming special session of Parliament in less than three weeks. There has also been speculation that the Lok Sabha polls might be brought forward.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has backed the idea of holding state and national elections simultaneously several times in the past, hailing what he called “One Nation, One Election”. But opposition parties reject the proposal as undemocratic and said the decision was “against the interests” of the country.
Union parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi confirmed that the committee was set up.
“Right now, a committee has been constituted. A report of the committee will come out, which will be discussed. Parliament is mature, and discussions will take place; there is no need to get nervous… India is called the mother of democracy; there is evolution… this is part of evolution,” he said.
The composition of the committee and the terms of its functioning will be announced soon, said people aware of the details.
The first few rounds of elections in independent India were held simultaneously — in 1951-52, 1957, 1962 and 1967 — but the schedule got fragmented after the 1967 elections when a number of state governments either lost their majorities or were dismissed later. In the past, a parliamentary standing committee, the Niti Aayog, and the Law Commission have weighed in on the issue, expressing concern over the burgeoning expense of holding one election after another but also flagging possible constitutional and legal problems.
“There were simultaneous polls for Lok Sabha and state assemblies till 1967. Now there are polls every few months and it is a huge expenditure. This must be discussed,” Joshi said.
The announcement comes ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in Congress-ruled Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh; the BRS-ruled Telangana; the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and in Mizoram where BJP’s ally the Mizo National Front is in power. These elections precede the 2024 Lok Sabha polls by about four-five months and another round of state elections that will be held in the same year in Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim, Maharashtra, Haryana and Mizoram. If synchronised polls are held in 2024, then the terms of the assemblies in Haryana and Maharashtra will have to be cut short by about six months as their assembly term is till November.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pushed for conducting simultaneous polls in the past, saying it will help curb spending and allow governments to function without the fetters that the model code of conduct (MCC) forces on development project. To be sure, MCC does not bar governments from completing ongoing work or even announcing new projects in cases of exigencies.
“The BJP has explained in detail the merits of holding simultaneous polls. The first, being taking the country out of the continuous election mode as polls are scheduled in 5-7 states in a calendar year. This leads to government officials and paramilitary forces being diverted and deployed for polls that in turn affects their usual work,” said a senior party leader.
In its 2014 election manifesto, the BJP said it intends to “evolve a method of holding Assembly and Lok Sabha elections simultaneously, through consultation with other parties”.
On Friday, BJP chief JP Nadda met Kovind
In 2019, Modi said in his Independence Day address that the concept of “one nation, one election” will be good for the country and said just as the goods and services tax achieved the dream of “one nation, one tax”, and the power sector saw “one nation, one grid” , simultaneous polls should happen in a democratic manner.
But the Opposition tore into the government over the move, saying it was a diversionary tactic that showed the BJP was afraid of losing the 2024 polls.
The Congress alleged that the Centre’s move came because the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sensed it would be trounced by the INDIA bloc in the general elections.
Rajasthan chief minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is so worried due to the INDIA alliance that he and the central government have sensed they are not going to win the 2024 elections and the BJP’s defeat is also certain in the states where assembly elections are going to be held this year.”
A 2016 discussion paper co-authored by Bibek Debroy and Kishore Desai noted that there was not a single year without an election to either a state assembly or Lok Sabha or both in over 30 years. The paper said the situation leads to massive recurring expenditures as well as prolonged deployment of security forces and manpower. The paper said electoral compulsions change the focus of policymaking and that short-sighted populist and “politically safe” measures are accorded higher priority. It suggested holding elections in two cycles with an interregnum of 30 months: 14 states to go to polls along with that of the Lok Sabha in one phase (in April-May 2019) and the remaining states in the next cycle two-and-a-half years later (in October-November 2021).
The paper also quoted a parliamentary panel’s report pegging the cost of simultaneous elections at ₹4,500 crore and said the cost of conducting 2014 Lok Sabha elections alone was ₹3,870 crore. The parliamentary standing committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice submitted a report on the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections in December 2015, recommending that elections could be held in two phases. It added that elections to some assemblies could be held during the midterm of Lok Sabha and added that polls to the remaining legislative assemblies could be held at the end of Lok Sabha’s term.
In 1999, the Law Commission in its 170th report on Reform of Electoral Laws backed the idea. “We must go back to the situation where the elections to Lok Sabha and all the legislative assemblies are held at once….the holding of a separate election to a legislative assembly should be an exception and not the rule,” it said.
In 2018, the draft report of the Law Commission said holding simultaneous elections would be ideal as well as desirable, but a workable formula is required to be provided in the Constitution. The report said the process of simultaneous elections did not alter any of the entries on the three lists (over the division of power between the Union and States) and did not interfere with the legislative competence of the Centre or the states. “Therefore, the commission comes to the inescapable conclusion that restoring simultaneous elections will, in no way, affect the basic structure of the Constitution, democracy, and the quasi-federal nature of the Constitution.”
In 2018, the election commission did not dismiss the idea outright but drew attention to the exorbitant costs that the proposal could incur. It told the Union law ministry that the financial implications of simultaneous polls needed to be considered, pegging the budget requirement at Rs. 9,200 crore for procuring the additional electronic voting machines and the voter verified paper audit trail systems if Lok Sabha and state assemble elections were held together in 2019.
In its submission to the poll watchdog, the BJP in 2018 had said, “frequent elections prove to be burden on government exchequer; repeated elections lead to ad-hocism as no firm policy decisions can be taken and parties in power tend to take populist measures rather than nationalist ones.”
Addressing a joint session of Parliament on January 29, 2018, Kovind had said citizens are concerned about the frequent elections in one part of the country or another. “Frequent elections not only impose a huge burden on human resources but also impede the development process due to the promulgation of the model code of conduct. Therefore, a sustained debate is required on the subject of simultaneous elections and all political parties need to arrive at a consensus on this issue,” he had said in the speech, which is traditionally prepared by the Centre.
