NEW DELHI: A working paper released by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) estimated that implementation of ‘One Nation One Election’ will reduce deployment of polling personnel by 28% (26 lakh personnel) over a 5-year election cycle. Meanwhile, the Lok Sabha on Wednesday extended the tenure of the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the 'ONOE Bill', to submit its report by the first day of the last week of the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
The paper, authored by EAC-PM member Sanjeev Sanyal and Joint Director Satvik Dev, argued that the estimated reduction in personnel-days of polling personnel under simultaneous elections will be 1.04 crore over a five-year election cycle.
The estimated reduction of 28 per cent in polling personnel under simultaneous elections, even though lower than the benchmark reduction of 33 per cent, is significant for at least two reasons, said the paper.
Since most polling personnel are teachers, and most polling stations are located in schools, a reduction of this scale in teaching days lost due to elections could have a significant impact on learning outcomes, according to the authors.
The authors said that the EC itself estimates that security deployment will be higher for a simultaneous election compared to a Lok Sabha election on account of bigger security requirements for maintenance of general law and order during election periods, securing vulnerable pockets/hamlets, providing security cover to VVIPs, and providing security to EVM and VVPAT strong rooms. “But, at the same time, under simultaneous elections, the separate deployment of security personnel for State Assembly elections will be reduced. Therefore, coming up with a single point estimate of the impact of simultaneous elections on deployment of security personnel is difficult,” it said.
“Note that no reduction is estimated for counting personnel since the process of counting of State Assembly and Lok Sabha votes, even in a simultaneous election, is mutually exclusive with separate personnel deployed for both,” it said.