Strictly speaking, a decision on early general elections could be taken via the fiat of a Cabinet meeting and does not need a special convening of Parliament, unless, of course, the Modi government would want the national stage to showcase all of its achievements, before calling for polls, if it does.

But why would it need to when all surveys suggest an easy ride to victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance? And besides, would the government really want to miss presiding over the official Ram Mandir inauguration in January?

Opposition leaders say their coming together is what has made the government nervous and the aim of early polls — both Mamata Banerjee and Nitish Kumar alluded to this well before the session was announced — is to try and stop the INDIA bloc from building momentum.

But no theory fully adds up.

Over the past nine years, it is evident that the Narendra Modi government enjoys a bit of shock and awe. The disruptive and dramatic mode of leadership is built on the element of surprise and the unexpected revelation. So really, in the end, what happens in Parliament could be early polls or something entirely unrelated. And the truth is, no one knows for sure.

What we do know for sure is that the Union government has decided to set up a committee under former President Ram Nath Kovind to explore the holding of simultaneous elections. And yes, this does indicate a seriousness of political intent. Especially as the Prime Minister has personally batted for the idea.

But beyond that, it doesn’t necessarily signal much. In the past — most recently in 2018 — multiple panels and reports have already weighed in on the feasibility of this proposal.

Implementing it is a whole different ball game.

The 2018 Law Commission report written by justice BS Chauhan said at least five constitutional amendments would be needed to fructify the idea of holding all polls in the same time frame. This means at least some of these amendments may need the ratification of state assemblies.

This is a technical question on which opinion is divided.

In fact, the legal question before the Supreme Court on the abrogation of Article 370 is related precisely to the powers of the legislative assembly and whether its consent was needed prior to the decision of the Union government.

But Kashmir — where the temporary nature of the special status was written into the Constitution — is a very different case.

If the government wants to push through the idea of simultaneous elections, it will remind Indians that the first elections in independent India were held together. And indeed, they were, but over five months between October 1951 and February 1952.

Subsequent elections till 1967 were held simultaneously to the Parliament and state assemblies. But once the schedule was disturbed, India entered perennial election mode, where, as multiple experts have pointed out, expenditure skyrocketed. An estimated ₹60,000 crore was spent on the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, including the election commission’s (EC) own expenditure.

In 1983, the EC first proposed bringing back simultaneous elections. In 1999, the Law Commission endorsed the idea. In 2018, the Law Commission once again underlined how the concept of one nation, one election would save public money and also reduce the burden on the administration.

However, justice Chauhan recognised the main practical challenge to the implementation. To synchronise the holding of Lok Sabha and state polls, you would need to either curtail or extend the life of several state assemblies. Any such complication could potentially trip the federal balance.

In his report, he provided three alternatives to get around this essential challenge: Advance or postpone the election schedule in certain states. If this were accepted, he said, elections would need to be held only twice in five years. And, he said, if there was no agreement on the former proposals, then all elections in a calendar year could be held together.

The last formula is intriguing.

And takes us back to where we started

Might we see the assemblies of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana vote alongside elections to Parliament?

We need three more weeks to conclusively know.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author. The views expressed are personal