12 february 2018 http://www.openthemagazine.com 47Modi’s Single ballot Solution
The bold proposal of holding Lok Sabha and
Assembly elections together confounds the opposition
By AmiTA ShAh
I
n March 2016, a BJP leader called some
journalists for an off-the-record briefing at
the party headquarters on ashoka road in
Delhi. The leader gave out details of how
Prime Minister narendra Modi had floated
the idea of simultaneous polls for the Lok Sabha as
well as state assemblies at an all-party meeting held
a month earlier. While the significance of it had es-
caped the media at the time, Modi’s intent was clear.
Three years ahead of the next General Election, he had
set a ball rolling that has acquired momentum and
raised political decibel levels in recent days. If Modi
has raised his pitch, President ram nath Kovind has
added urgency to the debate by bringing it up in his ad-
dress to Parliament at the start of the Budget Session.
Back in 2016, the BJP leader had claimed that most
party leaders at the February meeting favoured the
proposal in principle. While Modi has taken up its
advocacy in right earnest ever since, citing mostly the
costs and disruption of having poll after poll in some
state or another, the opposition’s stance remains rela-
tively ambiguous. Two months before that all-party
meeting, a parliamentary panel headed by a congress
leader had examined the ‘feasibility’ of holding cen-
tral and state polls together and recommended doing
it in two phases: one in the middle of the Lok Sabha’s
five-year term and the other at the end of its tenure.
“Largely, across party lines the view was that it would
be a good idea to have simultaneous elections in the
entire country, but there were apprehensions about
its feasibility,” says EM Sudersana natchiappan, who
had headed that Parliamentary Standing committee
on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice.
The committee, which had taken up the matter in
January 2015, drew up a two-phased election scenario
in its report. If the first phase were held in november
2016, for 16 states (nearly half the country), the current
Karnataka assembly would lose 599 days. Similarly,if a second round were held in mid-2019, himachal
Pradesh’s legislative house would have its term ex-
tended by 512 days. In all, natchiappan says, it would
take at least three such two-phased elections—over 15
years—before all polls could converge to a common
election for the entire country. “This would mean it
would take at least two decades before the proposal of
a single election becomes reality,” he says.
The BJP has been trumpeting the problems of the
poll calendar as it exists today: apart from the high
cost of multiple elections and frequent interruption
of governance by the imposition of a model code of
conduct, there is also the strain of being in constant
election mode and the prolonged deployment of secu-
rity forces. In a paper brought out last year by the niti
aayog, ‘analysis of Simultaneous Elections: The What,
Why and how’, its authors Bibek Debroy and Kishore
Desai also suggest a two-phased process: the Lok Sabha
and 14 states in april-May 2019, followed by the rest in
October-november 2021. This plan could be put into
place by the next General Election. It is structurally
in line with what the parliamentary committee pro-
posed, though this panel is headed now by BJP General
Secretary Bhupendra Yadav and is re-examining the
idea as part of a broader agenda of electoral reforms.
as the debate widens to touch upon the benefits
of making such a shift, a political consensus seems to
be eluding Modi. The opposition appears suspicious
of Modi’s ‘motives’ in pushing so hard for it, even as
smaller parties are apprehensive of getting eclipsed
by national parties and issues. Even BJP allies have
misgivings. Bihar chief Minister nitish Kumar, a
BJP ally, has thrown a spanner in the niti aayog’s
proposal, saying that his state should go to the
polls as scheduled in 2020 and not one year earlier.
The Shiv Sena’s anandrao adsul says the idea is
good, but has questions of viability. “how will
Gujarat go for another election? It’s very difficult togetty images