31
SIMULTANEOUS ELECTIONS
A.) Introduction: Meaning of
Simultaneous Election
Simultaneous elections should
imply that elections to all the three
tiers of constitutional institutions (Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assembly
and Local Bodies) take place in a synchronized
and co-ordinated fashion. What this effectively means is that a voter casts his vote for electing
members for all tiers of the Government on a single day.
B.) Reason for Supporting Simultaneous
Election
The key adverse impacts that the
existing electoral cycle leads to could be broadly categorized into the
following:
1. Impact on development programs and
governance due to imposition of Model Code of Conduct by the Election
Commission
2. Frequent
elections lead to massive
expenditures by Government and other stakeholders
3. Engagement of security forces
for significantly prolonged periods
4. Other
Issues
a.
Frequent
elections disrupt normal public life: Holding of political rallies
disrupts road traffic and also leads to noise pollution.
b.
Frequent elections perpetuate caste, religion and communal issues
across the country.
c.
Frequent elections adversely impact the focus of governance and policy making:
Need to win the next impending election makes short-term political imperatives
an immediate priority. As a result, sound long-term economic planning often
takes a back seat.
C.) How it will violate basic
principles of Constitution
Principle
of Accountability:
1.
The legislature shall be accountable to elected
representatives. Supporters of the measure often point to simultaneous
elections until 1967. But it is often forgotten that those simultaneous
elections were not constitutionally mandated; they occurred simultaneously only
because historically, electoral competition with adult suffrage formally took
off at the same time at the national and state level and for the first two
decades, electoral mandates for national and state legislatures ordinarily
remained stable (barring in Kerala). In other words, simultaneous elections
were not a principle but a function of historical coincidence and initial
political stability.
2.
The implication
of simultaneous election would be that a government cannot be removed, however
anti-people or under-performing it may be, or in spite of being hopelessly in a
minority, if the Opposition is not united enough on an alternative to
replace the existing ministry.
Role
of President:
NITI Aayog mentions, if the mechanism of
confidence vote fails and the Lok Sabha is to be prematurely dissolved, then,
instead of fresh elections, if the period is short, the president can carry on the administration with advice from a council of
ministers (which obviously does not have the support of the legislature).
This would be the most blatant violation of the principle of responsible government and such a proposal is
nothing short of rewriting the Constitution via a back door and bringing in of
the provision of “president’s rule”
at the national level. It would also accord to the president an unreasonably
wide discretion of appointing such an interim, non-responsible government.
Constitutional
Protection of 5 Year Tenure of an elected Legislature:
Three, if the legislature is to be inevitably
dissolved with a larger portion of the five-year term still remaining, then it
is suggested that fresh elections are held but the legislature shall not have
the full five-year term; instead, it would have a truncated term that remained from the previous legislature’s term.
This would jeopardise the constitutional protection that a legislature, once
elected, gets a five-year term.
D.) Way Forward
Are there no other solutions avoid
the key adverse impacts that the existing electoral cycle?
1.
If expenditure is an issue, that logic would
finally take us to the argument that elections
are expensive and hence problematic.
2.
If the interference of the model code of conduct is an issue, political parties need to impose
self-regulation when in power and
ensure that the boundaries between rightful
and legitimate decision-making and wrongful advantage of positions of power
to win votes are strictly and legally defined.
3.
If black (illegal) money is the problem, then it
can hardly be addressed by this measure; changing both laws and practices involving electoral finance
will be the best route to adopt. (660 Words)
XXX
Idea of One
Nation, One Election has been repeated from various public platforms on a
number of occasions. Four reasons are usually cited: massive expenditure; diversion of security and civil staff from primary
duties; impact on governance due to the model code of conduct, and disruption
to normal public life.
B.) Argument
against it
Cost Factor: Elections cost 0.05% of India’s total
expenditure: The
Election Commission incurs a total cost of roughly Rs. 8,000 crore to conduct all State and federal elections in a span of
five years, or roughly Rs. 1,500 crore
every year. Nearly 600 million Indians vote in India’s elections, which
means, it costs Rs. 27 per voter per
year to keep India an electoral democracy. Is this a “massive” expense? To
put this in context, all the States and the Centre combined incurred an expenditure of nearly Rs. 30 lakh crore
in FY2014. Surely, 0.05% of India’s
total annual expenditure is not a large price to pay for the pride of being
the world’s largest and most vibrant electoral democracy. The notion that
elections are prohibitively expensive is false and misleading.
Code of Conduct:
The model code of conduct for elections was agreed to by political parties in 1979, and prohibits the ruling
party from incurring capital expenditure
for certain projects after elections are announced. If India is indeed
embarking on a path of “cooperative federalism” as the Prime Minister also
claims, then more such projects will be
undertaken by each State and not by the Centre. So, why should elections in
one State hinder governance in the rest of the States? And if all political
parties still feel the need to reform
the code, they are free to do so. The solution is to reform the code and
not the electoral cycle.
Diversion of civil staff and disruption of public
life were the two other reasons cited, but
these sound more like reasons against holding elections in general. Surely, a disruption to public life twice in five
years is not a binding constraint in the larger interests of interim accountability.
Voter Behaviour:
There is clear empirical evidence that most
Indian voters tend to choose the same party when elections are held simultaneously
to both Centre and State, with the relationship diminishing as elections are
held farther away.
Federal Political Autonomy: Further, simultaneous elections impinge on the political autonomy
of States. Today, any elected State
government can choose to dissolve its Assembly and call for fresh elections.
If elections are to be held simultaneously, States will have to give up this
power and wait for a national election schedule. There can be legitimate
reasons for State governments to dissolve their Assemblies and call for fresh
elections, as should be the case in Tamil Nadu. Under a simultaneous elections regime, the State will be beholden to
the Union government for elections to its State, which goes against the
very grain of political autonomy under our federal structure.
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