Recent disclosures to select mediapersons from within the Law Commission and the seven-member high-level committee, headed by former president Ram Nath Kovind, on One Nation, One Election (ONOE) project, makes it worryingly evident that clearance to the idea of making nationwide polls a unitary and fixed-time exercise is now imminent.
A clutch of constitutional amendments and additions, which in all likelihood will alter the basic structure of the constitution, in letter as well as in spirit, appear inevitable, unless the electorate provides a stunning mandate reversing the verdicts of 2014 and 2019. In the event of the amendments being pushed through, India will take a mammoth step in becoming the world’s largest democracy in name only.
Also read: Simultaneous Elections: Why Now?
The double-edged recommendation from the Law Commission and the Kovind committee is obviously planned as a strategic poll-eve declaration, to ensure that this grossly populist and anti-democratic step, emerges as one of the foremost politically polarising issues, to benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party in the elections.
The project, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourite missions, was pushed on the basis of a quartet of questionable ‘justifications’: excessive expenditure for holding polls in rapid succession; impediments to governance because of Model Code of Conduct (MCC); impact on the delivery of essential services; and undue burden on government personnel deployed for conducting elections.
Of these issues, flagged consistently by Modi and his party to run down regular elections, at least the two politically contentious ones – a hindrance to governance after the MCC comes into play frequently and impeding the delivery of fundamental services, can be resolved by open-ended discussion between political parties and the Election Commission of India.
But the government made no effort to secure bipartisan support for the plan after March 2016, when Modi first advocated simultaneous elections to panchayat bodies, assemblies and parliament while addressing BJP national office-bearers and state unit chiefs. Prior to this, the issue remained one of the party’s numerous electoral promises made in its manifesto from 1984 onwards.
In September 2023, the government abruptly appointed the Kovind Committee and it nominated Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury without his consent.
Photo: Yogesh Mhatre/CC BY 2.0
Consequently, he opted out questioning the Committee’s composition, contending that its conclusion was pre-determined. Importantly, in his first address as president of India to the two Houses of Parliament in January 2018, Kovind made a strong pitch for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
That speech began the practice of the president putting a stamp of approval on assertions made by the PM.
Consequently, Kovind cannot be been expected to take a contrary position, rendering the Committee into an eyewash, aimed at camouflaging a pre-decided matter.
Besides examining ways to overcome hurdles in governance posed by the MCC and reducing the burden on personnel for electioneering, the BJP also took little action in curtailing poll expenditure.
The recent Supreme Court judgment nullifying electoral bonds triggered a fresh round of debate on curbing poll expenditure. It again underscored minimal efforts on the part of the BJP and the Centre to rein in poll costs to ensure a level playing field for all parties and candidates.
There is no ambiguity that the reasons cited by the Modi-BJP combine while pursuing the One Nation One Election undertaking are essentially a composite smokescreen to hide the real motivation behind simultaneous elections. This move will negatively impact the Indian body politic once it becomes the norm if the BJP is elected again.
There is a long-held view that in a politically diverse nation like India, periodic elections ensure that no emotionally driven mandate grants absolute power to a single party. It is necessary for voters to be armed with a corrective device and frequent elections not just ‘rectify’ verdicts, but also keep parties and governments on their toes.
For instance, if each and every state election was held alongside the parliamentary poll held after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, India’s political history would have been different and Rajiv Gandhi may have continued in office well beyond 1989 when his government was voted out. Likewise in 2019 when the twin Pulwama-Balakot events boosted the BJP’s fortunes and gave it a mandate that was improbable previously.
The American think-tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organisation hypothesised that if simultaneous elections were held in all states simultaneously with the 2014 parliamentary poll, the BJP would have met with greater success in the states.
Furthermore, a paper published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Centre for the Advanced Study of India in 2020 empirically demonstrated that voters in simultaneous elections were more swayed by party affiliation over the candidate’s individual characteristics.
Researchers also established that the probability of candidates from the same party winning Lok Sabha and Assembly seats, when held simultaneously, rises by more than 20%.
An insidious move
In addition to these studies, highlighting that reasons advanced for ushering simultaneous polls are little but ruses, the government has also refused to learn from the experience of the United Kingdom which in March 2022 repealed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, 2011 after all parties concluded that this legislation, resulted in chaos and constitutional deadlock in 2019.
For the ignoramus within the government and the BJP, The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill was introduced on May 12, 2021, and it received Royal Assent on March 24, 2022. The passage of this Act put an end to rather ‘adventurous’ 2011 legislation that fixed the time between two parliamentary elections as against the tried-and-tested and democratic way of holding elections, the way it was called for generations.
Although the British law of 2011 that has now been repealed pertained only for the UK’s general elections, and not for polls at the national and state level as being contemplated, its nullification has lessons for India.
Also read: Law Commission May Suggest New Chapter in Constitution on ‘One Nation, One Election’
It would thereby be prudent to press for greater circumspection and debate and not rush through the process of simultaneously holding polls at every level.
Just the way that the FTPA of 2011 significantly affected the British constitution, the proposed changes in the Indian constitution to usher in simultaneous polls would hollow out the spirit of Indian tenets, showcased by Modi as India’s “only Holy Book.”
The “three major Constitutional amendments”, which would be required to usher in the proposed ‘fixed’ electoral calendar, would also necessitate the insertion of an additional chapter in the constitution.
Most importantly, the tenures of several state assemblies would either have to be curtailed or extended between 2024 and 2029 to ensure that when the next parliamentary poll is held, all state assemblies are also dissolved and elections conducted simultaneously.
Such tenure-adjustment will violate the people’s mandates in these states because it was for a specified period which could be altered only due to political exigencies like the government losing majority due to desertions, or being voted out through a no-confidence motion. In theory, these acts reflect public sentiment.
The amendments also mandate that in the event of governments losing majority, efforts should be made for the formation of either a ‘unity’ government or electing a new government for a curtailed period till the next ‘scheduled’ poll.
None of the proposals that are likely to be mooted are aimed at strengthening Indian democracy and institutions. Instead, the effort is to ensure the stability of the Executive and giving greater importance to governance. The entire effort is aimed at running the nation like a corporate structure and not a democratic country where people’s mandate is supreme.
The primary intention behind pushing simultaneous polls is to weaken multi-party democracy under which different parties govern in states and replace it with a one-party system with absolute power.
This would also put a de facto end to the system of parliamentary democracy and introduce a presidential form of polity wherein the individual is of greater importance than organisation and ideology.
We need to quickly recollect that when the Constituent Assembly debated if India should retain the bicameral system or shift to a unicameral legislature, the decision was almost unanimously to retain the Upper House because it provided greater political diversity by electing its members biennially and ‘corrected’ political spikes.
Not just the opposition parties but even political allies of the BJP must be aware of the threat to their existence as over time, simultaneous polls will weaken India’s regional parties.
One can disagree with the politics of several of these, but few can deny that the emergence of regional forces empowered new communities, previously excluded from the power structure.
Pushing through One Nation One Election on the eve of this year’s parliamentary election is an insidious move and must be opposed by all democratic forces.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is an author and journalist based in Delhi-NCR. His latest book is ‘The Demolition, The Verdict and The Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project, and he’s also the author of ‘Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times’. His X handle is @NilanjanUdwin.
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