One Nation, One election: the bill does not pass (for now)

In the past few days, two proposals for constitutional amendments to merge elections had been tabled but did not receive parliamentary approval. The plan was to hold the general consultations and those of the individual states at the same time. For the supporters, including the BJP, this system would obscure the role of regional parties.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) - The Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, has rejected two bills to change the Constitution and thus allow the implementation of the ‘One nation, one election’ plan promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On 17 December, despite 269 votes in favour and 198 against (a qualified majority is needed to approve constitutional amendments), the proposals failed to pass.

The ‘One nation, one election’ project envisages the simultaneous holding of national and state elections. Currently, India is governed with separate election schedules: every five years there are general elections to choose members of parliament, state elections for members of the legislative assemblies of individual states, and local elections for councillors in rural and urban areas. The aim of the plan is to maintain the five-year time frame but holding all elections on a single date.

In March 2024, an ad-hoc committee chaired by former President Ram Nath Kovind had issued an in-depth report on the economic and social implications of the plan. According to the BJP and PM Modi, the proposal would drastically reduce election costs, leading to a 1.5 per cent increase in their domestic product. Critics, on the contrary, point out that simultaneous elections would lead to even higher costs: with 900 million voters, India would have to buy new voting machines, hire additional security personnel and election officials. According to a Department of Law and Justice report published in 2015, the estimated cost of holding elections on a single date would be around Rs 92.84 billion, more than double the current expenditure of Rs 45 billion (for general and state elections).

In August, PM Modi had also stated that frequent elections hinder the nation's progress. ‘With elections being held every three to six months, any development plan is tied to election results.’ Proponents of ‘One nation, one election’ cite, in particular, welfare programmes, which have slowed down in recent years precisely because of elections. More continuous governance would allow a faster development of the country.

Opposition parties, led by Congress, have called the ‘One nation, one election’ plan ‘undemocratic’ and ‘unconstitutional’, considering it a risk to India's federal structure. According to the Congress, the plan would favour national parties at the expense of regional ones, centralising power in the hands of the central government and weakening the autonomy of individual states.

The system of simultaneous elections is not new in India: it was adopted from 1951 to 1967, until the dissolution of some state legislative assemblies led to the adoption of separate elections. The reintroduction of this system has been debated for decades: it was previously proposed by the Election Commission in 1983, the Legislative Commission in 1999 and the government think tank Niti Aayogh in 2017.

Following the lack of consensus in the Lok Sabha, the bills will be sent to a joint parliamentary committee for ‘wider consultation.’ The committee, comprising 31 members of the Lok and Rajya Sabha (the two houses of parliament), will examine the two proposals and submit a report within 90 days in an attempt to break the current impasse.

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