Reality bites

The reality and practice of democracy in India is never quite as attractive as the idea of a global power where institutional structures and citizens form disciplined columns behind a strong leader. Among several such ideas that different political parties conjure up from time to time, especially in an election year when there is a specific urgency to entrance the electorate, one that had gained currency of late has been the concept of simultaneous State and Central elections. Indeed, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad hailed it as an idea whose time has come. “One nation one election” would reduce expenditure, prevent the country from being in a perpetual election mode, make policy more rational than populist and facilitate effective implementation of policy measures. It wasn’t a particularly novel project; Justice BP Jeevan Reddy had envisaged it in the One Hundred Seventieth Report on Reform of Electoral Laws in 1999. “The cycle of elections every year, and in the out of season, should be put an end to. We must go back to the situation where the elections to the Lok Sabha and all the Legislative Assemblies are held at once… The rule ought to be one election once in five years for Lok Sabha and all the Legislative Assemblies,” Justice Reddy had said in the report. The present Chairman of the Law Commission, Justice BS Chauhan, reiterated the assertions earlier this year, when he recommended that simultaneous elections be restored by amending the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and the Rules of Procedure of the Lok Sabha and those of the State Legislative Assemblies. With the ruling party pushing for it, it almost seemed as if the two-decade-long project was finally coming to fruition.

But the Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat has all but dashed any such hopes. “The lawmakers will take at least a year to frame a law that can be enforceable. This process takes time,” Rawat said. The term of the Mizoram Assembly ends on December 15, the terms of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan assemblies will end on January 5, January 7 and January 20, 2019, respectively. The life of these assemblies cannot be extended or curtailed without a Constitutional amendment. Further, the EC commences preparations for the Lok Sabha elections 14 months before the scheduled timeframe of polling, Rawat said. The plausibility of simultaneous polls fades further given the CEC’s clarification that the Commission has a staff strength of just 400 but deploys 1.11 crore people on poll duty during elections. The CEC has earlier pointed out that it would be a logistical problem if faulty Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines had to be replaced during the poll process as adequate reserves are not available with the Commission.

The CEC is only being realistic. Given ground realities, ‘one nation one election’ is an idea ahead of its time for present day India.

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