Debate on simultaneous polls in India
Are simultaneous elections to national parliament (Lok Sabha) and assemblies in states in India, with its huge size and geographical and cultural diversity, feasible? Will fresh national elections in India be brought forward from its due time in the first half of next year to the end of this year to facilitate simultaneous elections?
These questions are being discussed in political circles and corridors of power in Delhi after the idea of simultaneous holding of elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower House of parliament directly elected by the people, and legislative assemblies in states received a firm push from the highest quarters of the country—President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi—at two separate forums on January 29.
While Kovind, in his first address to the joint (the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, the upper House) sitting of bicameral parliament, made a strong push for simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly polls, Modi flagged the issue while interacting with lawmakers belonging to his Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies in the ruling National Democratic Alliance. Both the events took place on the same day. Kovind argued that frequent polls hurt the Indian economy by imposing a huge burden on human resources while the "model code of conduct" clamped by the Election Commission for conduct of the elections "impeded" development activities.
The speculations about simultaneous polls and advancing the next national elections were sparked by the President's speech in parliament and mounted later on January 29 afternoon at a meeting of NDA leaders where Modi reiterated the need for simultaneous national and state elections, saying the leaders could start debating the matter and create a positive atmosphere for the idea. The PM once again drove home the point that a continuous cycle of elections in states at different times "hurt" development and was a huge financial burden on the state exchequer.
The remarks by Kovind and Modi appear to be a carefully thought-out move although it needs to be pointed out that the President's speech in the joint sitting of parliament is a document written by the government and reflects the latter's views and priorities.
The proposal for simultaneous national and state polls—or what has come to be known as "one nation one poll"—was put forward for the first time by India's Law Commission way back in May 1999, when India was going through years of unstable coalition politics and fractured mandates particularly in parliamentary elections which triggered frequent polls. Then there were two stable Congress-led governments for ten years from 2004 before Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party won power with emphatic majority in 2014 elections.
In 2015, a parliamentary standing committee in its report had raised the issue of the cost of conducting the elections (it had estimated the cost of Lok Sabha and state assembly elections at Rs 4,500 crore) and the impact of a series of elections on governance, and suggested that simultaneous national and state polls can undermine policy control. In his address to the joint session of both Houses of parliament in 2017, former President Pranab Mukherjee had also expressed concerns over frequent polls, saying "they put on hold development programmes…and burden human resources with prolonged periods of election duty." He also called for a debate on the matter.
In his speech, Kovind talked about how the "model code of conduct" clamped by the Election Commission for conduct of the elections "impeded" development activities. The code of conduct, aimed at ensuring level playing field for ruling and opposition parties in electoral battles, bars a government of the day at the Centre or a state from announcing fresh initiatives or sops and taking decisions which would woo voters and give an unfair advantage to the ruling dispensation.
In states across India, the elections to their legislative assemblies are held keeping an eye on the five-year tenure of the assemblies, and these timelines are different from either one state to another or a group of states to another. In a huge country like India, the poll process—whether it is for parliamentary or state assembly election—is usually lengthy, lasting nearly a month on an average.
This is mainly to facilitate the movement of federal law and order personnel and poll officials. For this, a government cannot take any major decision relating to governance for fear of violating the code of conduct. Votaries of simultaneous polls claim this often results in policy and administrative paralysis. For instance, even the process for the coming elections to three small north-eastern states of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland will take almost a month. Secondly, election booths are set up in schools and colleges where studies and often exam schedules have to be readjusted keeping in mind the elections. Thirdly, teachers and federal and state government officials are engaged in conducting the elections who are then diverted from their main areas of activities—class rooms and administration respectively.
It was also suggested by Bibek Debroy and Kishore Desai of India's Policy Commission that the framing of the Indian election cycle should be done in a manner that polls to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies are "synchronised together." But holding simultaneous polls is easier said than done. India's new Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat had recently said that creating a legal framework for simultaneous national and state polls would take time because it would need an amendment to the constitution, Representation of People Act and other related laws. Then, deployment of security men and women, poll officials and electronic voting machines in seven lakh polling booths across the country, in varied types of topography and climatic conditions, has to be elaborately planned. To address all these issues, it is possible that even simultaneous elections have to be conducted over multiple phases involving a lengthy timeframe and raising the same issues which are now being faced in elections held at different times and over a number of phases.
The opposition led by Congress has been wary of simultaneous polls, suspecting that this might be a ploy to overcome anti-incumbency of BJP governments in major states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where fresh state polls are due this year-end. BJP, on the other hand, has favoured simultaneous elections, and this was contained in the party's manifesto in the previous parliamentary polls in 2014. Mainstream opposition parties like Congress, Trinamool Congress, CPI, Nationalist Congress Party, and CPI(M) have termed simultaneous polls as "impractical" and "unworkable."
But the question is: are simultaneous polls feasible given the different terms in the offices of various state governments? Secondly, will BJP advance the parliamentary polls to coincide with polls in the Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh? Also, elections to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states are due next year. Will the ruling parties of those three states agree to simultaneous polls with the Lok Sabha elections as that would necessitate curtailing their governments' tenure there by a few months? Will political parties reconcile their penchant for real politics on the ground with the idea of simultaneous national and state elections?
Besides, there is no guarantee that advancing the parliamentary elections will ensure advantage for BJP as such a move had backfired in 2004, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. The next parliamentary poll is going to be a referendum on the Modi government and it is unlikely that clubbing state polls with the national election will help state-specific issues to be supplanted by national issues on which the Modi government can claim achievements. A regional party like Biju Janata Dal, ruling the eastern state of Odisha, has succeeded in retaining power trumping Congress party and BJP in successive state elections. So has Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, in West Bengal in 2016.
Simultaneous polls could be a political gamble for BJP but the stakes could be fraught with risks. But then Modi is a leader who is not averse to taking risks as demonetisation (scrapping of high-value currency notes) in late 2016 has proved. Will he take the plunge once again?
Pallab Bhattacharya is a special correspondent of The Daily Star.