The case for one nation, one poll

The Ram Nath Kovind panel has come up with a detailed and plausible plan to have simultaneous elections for all three tiers of government. It has proposed simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies with polls to local bodies held within 100 days of these. The idea of one nation, one poll is a welcome one. The challenge, however, is in the procedural details and the fear that it militates against the federal structure and spirit of the Constitution. These are concerns that need wider consultations and a broader political consensus. The report needs to be discussed in Parliament and state assemblies.
At the outset, simultaneous elections are welcome for they will help avoid disruptions in governance due to frequent elections. All elections have become competitive and expensive exercises. Governance is stalled when parties and leaders turn on the campaign mode and the model code of conduct kicks in. Less frequent elections will enable leaders to focus on governance. This view of the Kovind panel, surely, has merit. But when federal relations are fraught and the Centre is suspected of championing a unitarian idea of the nation — one-nation-one-poll is perceived by the Opposition as an extension of the BJP’s ideological preference for homogeneity and uniformity with respect to language, customs, faith, dress, and diet — the push for simultaneous elections will be viewed as the imposition of the political agenda of the party in office.
It needn’t be so. One, simultaneous elections were the norm in the first decade after Independence, until the Nehru Cabinet blotted the copybook by dismissing the CPI-led government in Kerala in 1959. Thereafter, the Congress, and the Janata Party in the post-Emergency interregnum, weaponised Article 356 and dismissed Opposition-led state governments numerous times, until the Supreme Court stepped in with the Bommai judgment in 1994. Two, voters are intelligent enough to recognise the federal balance and choose parties/candidates as per the House they are voting to elect: Voting patterns for general and assembly elections in different states — Delhi, Odisha, Kerala, and West Bengal, for instance — suggest this awareness among voters.
The challenge before the Union government now is to convince the Opposition and state governments that the merits of simultaneous polls outweigh fears about the centralisation of the polity. And the Opposition should realise that it is not the process that is failing them but their politics.