The high-level committee headed by former President Ramnath Kovind has provided the template for India to return to the system of simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, which got completely disrupted over half a century ago.
After a comprehensive examination of the constitutional, administrative and other issues involved in bringing about simultaneity, the committee has recommended that this process could begin with a Lok Sabha poll, possibly in 2029.
The Kovind Committee’s recommendations are not surprising, because several other institutions and agencies have argued in favour of synchronising the elections—including the Election Commission of India, Law Commission, National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, a standing committee of parliament, and NITI Aayog.
While all these institutions agreed on the need to hold the elections simultaneously, there was considerable divergence in their views on execution of the plan. However, the Kovind Committee’s recommendations offer a 360-degree view of the problem and what appears to be the most practical way to resolve it, although it is rather complex.
The committee held extensive consultations with political parties, citizens and other stakeholders. Among the national political parties, only two out of six—Bharatiya Janata Party and National People’s Party—favoured the idea of evolving a system to ensure simultaneity. Among the state parties, 13 out of 33 liked the idea, while seven parties were against it; the remaining 13 parties preferred to remain neutral. Interestingly, four former chief justices of India—Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi, Sharad Arvind Bobde and Uday Umesh Lalit—were in favour of simultaneous polls, as also were nine out of the 12 chief justices of high courts who participated in the consultations.
After taking note of the recommendations from different political parties and other stakeholders, the Kovind Committee stated, “The loss of simultaneity in elections after the first two decades of India’s independence has had a baneful effect on the economy, polity and society. Initially, two elections were held every 10 years. Now several elections are held every year.”
This cast a huge burden on government, businesses, workers, courts, political parties, candidates contesting elections and civil society at large. The committee therefore recommended that the government should develop “a legally tenable mechanism” to restore the cycle of simultaneous elections.
In order to bring about this synchronisation, the panel recommended that the President of India may, by notification issued on the date of the first sitting of the Lok Sabha after a general election, fix an ‘appointed date’; the tenure of all state assemblies constituted after that date and before the expiry of the full term of the Lok Sabha shall be only for the period up to the subsequent election to the Lok Sabha. Thereafter, all general elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies shall be held simultaneously.
In the second phase, elections to municipalities and panchayats will be synchronised with this. Further, the committee has said that should the Lok Sabha be dissolved prematurely, fresh elections should be held to constitute a new House, but its tenure will be limited to the unexpired term of the dissolved House.
If parliament amends the Constitution and the election laws as suggested, the process of synchronisation could begin with the president’s notification soon after the constitution of the new Lok Sabha in 2029, and the alignment of the national and state elections would be completed by 2034. This is indeed a long haul, taking a full decade to finalise, but it is worth it.
As the Kovind Committee has pointed out, we have seen 400 elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies since independence. This is truly mind-blogging and a major impediment to governance and national progress. Democracy should not result in reckless political manoeuvrings and election-mania that leads to policy paralysis, governance deficit and disrupts normal life and the functioning of essential services. The committee has rightly rejected the opinion of the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist); both claimed that if the elections were synchronised, it would be “fundamentally anti-democratic” and would strike at the root of parliamentary democracy.
Does it lie in the mouth of a Congress leader to put forth these arguments when all the stalwarts of the party who drafted the Constitution—including Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad—approved simultaneous elections in the 1950s and 1960s. The system suited the party in the first two decades after the Constitution came into being.
Secondly, electoral data shows that the people vote differently in the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections these days. There are dozens of examples of this in recent years from states such as Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. As the largest democracy in the world, Indians take pride in the electoral choices they make and in the potpourri of political parties which they have promoted over the years. For example, the Second Lok Sabha had 12 political parties; this number is now around 40.
It is now up to the new government that is formed after the Lok Sabha elections next June to consider these recommendations. Currently, most opinion polls seem to indicate that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is headed for a two-thirds majority. If the opinion polls turn out right, one can safely predict that simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies will be on top of the agenda for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his third term for two reasons.
First, he has a penchant for diving into the most complex issues which appear irresolute and resolving them—abrogation of Article 370 and reservation of a third of the seats in parliament and state assemblies for women are immediate examples that come to mind. Second, he is likely to have the requisite strength in both Houses of parliament to ensure passage of the constitutional and other legislative measures to bring about simultaneity.
One must look forward to an end to the current chaos vis-a-vis elections and a return to a more orderly electoral exercise once in five years all over the nation, so all governments at the Centre and in the states can focus on governance and national development for much of that period.
(Views are personal)
(suryamedia@gmail.com)
A Surya Prakash | Vice-Chairman, Executive Council, Prime Ministers Museum and Library, New Delhi.