Why simultaneous elections may be a good idea for India
The plan makes imminent sense from the perspective of cost and governance, but its implementation will require addressing legal and political challenges.
Nine assembly elections, local body elections in four states, and, again, a handful of by-elections (to both the Lok Sabha and state assemblies). That was 2023.
Seven assembly elections, local body elections in seven states and the Union territory of Delhi, and a handful of by-elections (to both the Lok Sabha and state assemblies). That was 2022.
Five assembly elections, local body elections in at least nine states, and, yet again, a handful of by-elections (to both the Lok Sabha and state assemblies). That was 2021.
That’s an average of 14 elections in a year. Given how competitive elections have become – the mainstream political parties contest even local body elections with all seriousness – that’s a lot.
Hundreds of millions of people have voted in each of these three years, some more than once (and this despite there being no general election). Political parties have spent hundreds of crores of rupees in each of these years (perhaps more) on campaigns alone; there’s also the amount states, especially, have spent on populist schemes in the run-up to elections, or soon after, as they deliver on intemperate election promises. Hundreds of person-days of political bandwidth have been used up in campaigning in each of these years (the Prime Minister, sitting chief ministers, and cabinet ministers, both in the Union and in the states, have all been actively involved in these). And, according to an analysis by Hindustan Times, in the five years to April-May 2024 (when the Lok Sabha elections were held) states and UTs spent between 80 and 145 days under the force of the Model Code of Conduct, restricting the range of government activities. At the top end, that’s almost a month every year for the past five years (and the states affected were large ones such as West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala).
All of this is exactly what the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance hopes to put an end to with the One Nation, One Election (ONOE) plan.
The Union Cabinet, on September 18, approved the recommendations of the Ramnath Kovind-led committee set up in September 2023 to study the idea. The Cabinet’s approval is merely a start; several laws need to be amended before ONOE becomes a reality, and with parties ruling several state governments opposed to the idea, and the NDA itself not having the kind of overwhelming numerical superiority it once did in Parliament, it will take some doing. While 32 political parties including the Shiv Sena, Biju Janata Dal, and YSRCP have supported the idea, another 14, including the Congress, TMC, and DMK, have opposed it. The main reason for opposition appears to be the fear that simultaneous elections could favour the national political hegemon, in this case the BJP.
Not all experts believe that to be the case (but more on that anon). But the arguments in favour of the plan – time, money, governance – are more substantive. Indeed, in his letter to the Kovind panel, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge claimed simultaneous elections go against guarantees of federalism and the composition of Kovind panel was highly biased.
Hindustan Times analyses the contours of a radical and much-needed plan that could change India’s election calendar, and well shift the needle from a lot of politics and a bit of governance, to a bit of politics and a lot of governance.
A campaign continuum
Forty seven days before the Election Commission of India announced the schedule for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Kharge had already kicked off the party’s campaign from Uttarakhand, on January 28. The party’s face Rahul Gandhi hit the roads in his Manipur-to-Mumbai Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra the same month.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP too, didn’t wait for the Election Commission to sound the poll bugle. The PM went on an overdrive, attending more than 80 events from January to right before March 16, when the EC announced poll schedule. Cabinet ministers of the government also hit the trail.
Now, three months after the Lok Sabha elections, Modi is back on the campaign trail for the J& K and Haryana assembly polls. Soon after the two polls, the PM, Union ministers and Opposition leaders will focus on the Maharashtra and Jharkhand elections, to be held in the winter of 2024. In a country with a federal form of government, and where, at this point in time, nine of the states and UTs are ruled by parties opposed to or not part of the BJP-led NDA, this campaign continuum also mars the relationship between the Union and the states.
Experts point out that while simultaneous polls will still mean intense competition, once the elections are over, the Centre and the states can get down to the business of governance, irrespective of who is in charge.
“I strongly feel the One Nation, One Election is necessary. But there is strong bitterness between the ruling and the Opposition side. Normally, political temperature would rise only during the elections. But in the last few years, we have seen the political temperature remaining high throughout the year. This definitely takes a toll on policy issues that require a consensus building exercise,” said former Lok Sabha secretary general P Sreedharan.
Overheating poll economy
Bringing down the staggering costs incurred on elections is one of the prime reasons cited by the Union government and those who support synchronised polls. The election commission that has the mandate to conduct elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies has submitted to the Law Commission that the cost of holding general elections and assembly polls is about ₹4,500 crore. But the actual number may be several times higher, including campaign costs and other expenditure.
Earlier this year, days ahead of the June 4 Lok Sabha verdict, the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), a research organisation, estimated that the spending for the Lok Sabha polls that were held over seven phases from April 19 to June 1 would be around ₹1.35 lakh crore, which is double of the ₹60,000 crore spent in 2019. N Bhaskara Rao of the CMS said the expenses were broadly a compilation of the spending by political parties on campaigning that included advertising and transport and spending by the election commission that is allocated a budget by the finance ministry.
Spending by political parties on elections as reflected in their expense statement to the EC is also not perceived as an accurate submission, said people aware of the details. “For one, most parties spend over the limit imposed by the EC, but these things can be challenged only with evidence,” said an EC official.
Backing ONOE, as a means of reducing costs, senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and a former lawmaker, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe said expenses have gone up over the years, given the expectations from political parties. “There is a tendency among the voters to look for freebies,” he said.
The Law Commission, in its 2018 report on simultaneous elections, also pointed to an efficiency issue: When elections are held simultaneously, the cost incurred to conduct elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies are borne equally by the government of India and the state government, thereby reducing the burden.
The commission referred to the spending on elections in Odisha, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh that were held simultaneously with Lok Sabha elections in 2014. It said the average expense per assembly constituency was lower in simultaneous polls as compared to spending in states which went to polls separately.
“The cost incurred by the EC for conducting 2014 Lok Sabha elections alone was about Rs.3586,27,07,609. Thus, segregated elections take away opportunities to optimise such costs and lead to yearly outflow of public money, significantly,” the report said.
Politics vs governance
A few months before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, then finance and external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee was sitting in his office when an aide plonked a pile of files on his table. Mukherjee’s face turned red in anger. “I am a politician. Not a bureaucrat who will read files when election is round the corner!” he scoffed at his aide.
It is usually difficult to maintain a balance between poll campaign and the pace of governance.
In this context, the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) that prevents governments from announcing any financial grants, starting new projects or schemes of any kind, or making ad hoc appointments in government and public undertakings has become a strong argument for having simultaneous polls.
A 2015 report of a parliamentary standing committee exploring the idea of simultaneous elections said the MCC triggered policy paralysis in the poll season. “The imposition of MCC puts on hold the entire development programme and activities of the Union and state governments in a poll bound state. It even affects the normal governance. Frequent elections lead to imposition of MCC over prolonged period of time. This often leads to policy paralysis and governance deficit,” the report said.
Government data showed that in 2016-17 the code of conduct was operational in one part or the other of Maharashtra on 307 days out of 365 days.The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) told the Law Commission in 2018 that “the governance is affected due to non-observance of the oath of office taken by the ministers who are bound to discharge their constitutional duty instead of concentrating on elections.”
A NITI Aayog report has said that if the average period of operation of Model Code of Conduct is two months for an election to a state assembly, “It would be reasonable to expect applicability of Model Code of Conduct for about four months or more every year in some or other areas of the country.”
Former vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had taken the same pitch in 2003 in an article to underline how “the frequent cycle of elections” lead to “causality of public governance” and how “populist measures take the place of long-term nationalist measures.”
The political battle
On the sidelines of an official luncheon hosted in 2010 by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Bharatiya Janata Party patriarch LK Advani spoke to him and senior Congress minister Pranab Mukherjee about the concept of simultaneous elections. In his blog, Advani wrote how he found both Singh and Mukherjee “receptive to a proposal” he had been advocating for “fixed term legislatures and simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls”.
Making a case for simultaneous polls, Advani said the “upshot would be: no uncertainty about the date of the five-yearly Lok Sabha and Assembly elections”.
“...The provisions that provide for midway dissolution either by the President or by the Governor has resulted in a situation wherein elections are not held every five years as contemplated by our Constitution makers, and as were actually held in 1952, 1957, 1962 and 1967 – that is for the first two decades after Independence. After that, almost every alternate year we have been witnessing a general election, or a mini–general election...
This is not good for the health either of our central and state governments, or of our polity. Let us seriously rethink about it,” Advani wrote.
The idea has since then found its way into the BJP’s election manifesto The Union Cabinet has supported the idea of synchronising polls to the Lok Sabha and assemblies, but political parties are divided on the issue. As many as 14 parties including the Congress, the TMC, the Left parties among others have recorded their opposition to the idea, while 32 have backed it. Several parties are yet to articulate their view while some such as the Bahujan Samaj Party that were initially opposed to it have now changed their stance. The BSP, for instance, has now backed the idea provided the “objective be in national and public interest”.
“The objective of democracy is governance, and elections should not be the object but the means of governance. There should be consistency in development. We need certainty of elections and there should be continuity of governance. We also need a level playing field for all,” said Union minister and BJP leader Bhupender Yadav.
Echoing his view, former MP and BJP leader Vinay Sahasrabuddhe said, “ONOE will be the mother of all political reforms. Most of the ills in the system are because of too many polls and too many human hours spent on poll-related activities. This leaves little time and energy for actual development.”
He refuted the charge that ONOE would weaken the federal system of the country.
“Simultaneous elections have been held in the past between 1951 to 1967, and there was no impact on the federal structure then... The savings that we hope to accrue from ONOE can be put for development purposes as estimate show ₹15 to 16,000 crore is being spent on elections. For poll preparations alone, at least 10 people are required to spend 10 days at each polling booth, it’s a huge utilisation of human resources,” he said.
When asked if ONOE threatens the federal structure as alleged by the opposition parties, former CEC OP Rawat said, “It is not violative of the constitutional provisions.”
And Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies said simultaneous elections do not pose a threat to federalism. “ONOE can only threaten the existence of smaller regional parties, which could get overshadowed by the narrative of the bigger parties if the elections to the Lok Sabha and assembly are held together,” he said.
The Law Commission in its 2018 report also underscored how frequent deployment of security forces for poll purposes can be avoided though ONOE. “Considering that one or the other state assembly goes to polls every six months...this situation leads to a lock-in of security forces for prolonged period of time. Such a situation takes away a big portion of such armed police force, which could otherwise be better deployed for other internal security purposes – the core responsibilities of these forces,” the report said.
Frequent elections are also perceived to cause disruption for school staff and teaching personnel who are directed to proceed for election duties, compromising their primary duty of imparting education. “Apart from the day of poll, the schools remain closed even prior to the day of elections, for preparatory measures. Similar is the case with employees of central and state governments and the PSUs who are assigned election duty. The officials on such duty are required to abstain themselves from their normal duties to attend training relating to the conduct of elections, counting, etc. Holding staggered elections leads to such disruptions time and again. This makes holding of simultaneous elections more desirable,” the report said.
But building consensus over One Nation, One election in the current fractured polity remains an uphill task.
In his letter to former President Ram Nath Kovind, Kharge opposed the idea as “undemocratic” and cited, “We would like to bring to the attention of everyone that in the last 10 years, the only instances where the chief ministers have lost the confidence of the house have been when one particular party has abused the government machinery at its disposal and subverted the anti-defection law to steal people’s mandate.”
The heightened acrimony between the BJP and the Congress-led Opposition fuelled by misuse of federal agencies, arrests of key Opposition leaders or the attacks or the shrinking role of the Opposition in law-making has left limited space for building consensus on larger issues.
Politics may well decide whether a good idea sees light of day.
