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Simultaneous polls idea naive

The issue of holding elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies simultaneously is being debated these days.

Simultaneous polls idea naive

Constitutional issues are involved in holding simultaneous elections. PTI



Jagdeep S Chhokar
Former Director, IIM, Ahmedabad

The issue of holding elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies simultaneously is being debated these days. The points in support of the proposal mostly take into account the two factors of expenditure and governance.

To think that simultaneous elections will save huge expenditure is amazingly naïve. Given the fact that elections are the primary means of operationalising democracy, it raises the question: Should India be looking or aspiring for the cheapest possible democracy or the best possible? Those interested in ensuring the continuation of democracy in the country will support a quest for the "best possible". (Taking this argument to the extreme, one might even argue for not having elections at all!)

The 'saving huge expenditure' logic also overlooks the issue of who spends how much money on elections. The figure of Rs 4,500 crore quoted to have been spent by the Election Commission pales into insignificance when compared to what is spent by candidates and political parties, overtly and covertly. While myriad reasons are cited why candidates and political parties have to spend such huge amounts, the real reason is the complete absence of internal democracy in the functioning of all political parties, particularly in candidate selection.

The key to reducing expenditure on elections, therefore, lies in democratising the internal functioning of parties and their candidate selection processes and not by forcibly, and unconstitutionally, reducing the frequency of elections.

The role of parties needs to be looked at more critically. It is a moot point whether arguments of political parties remaining busy in formalising and executing strategies for the next cycle of elections as also shifting attention from developmental works to winning elections point to a problem with the holding of elections or with the behaviour of political parties. The question arises: Do political parties exist with the sole purpose of trying to win elections or are they also supposed to do something after winning?

Regarding governance as the reason for holding elections to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies simultaneously, it is argued that simultaneous elections will save expenditure and provide more time to the governments to undertake development work. It implies that elections are detrimental to development or, in other words, democracy and development are and either/or proposition. There can be nothing more fallacious than this unless of course a society decides that it will prefer development over democracy.

It is true that there can be development without democracy, China and Singapore being two examples. But in India's case, the founding fathers seemed to consciously chosen to follow a democratic path to development. And this choice remains enshrined in the Constitution. Therefore, to say that frequency of elections should be reduced seems to be against the spirit of the Constitution, because the sole purpose of elections is to make democracy possible.

There are other constitutional issues involved in holding simultaneous elections. States have a separate constitutional existence in the Constitution with separate chapters and articles dealing with states. The states have their own rhythm of elections which have evolved through their own histories. Trying to force their election cycles into the Lok Sabha election cycle is again a violation of the spirit of the Constitution.

The other, and much more serious, constitutional issue arises from the 'basic structure' doctrine which was enunciated by a 13-jugde bench of the Supreme Court in 1973 in what is called the Kesavananda Bharati judgment. The doctrine postulates that while Article 368 of the Constitution authorises the Parliament to amend provisions of the Constitution, it does not give the Parliament the power to change the 'basic structure' of the Constitution. Elements of the 'basic structure' have been described in various judgments of the Supreme Court including in Kesavananda Bharati. One of the constitutive elements of the 'basic structure' that features in all formulations is the federal character of the Constitution.

Forcibly linking the state assembly elections to the Lok Sabha elections will clearly work to reduce the importance of states in the national scheme of things and will therefore be a violation of the 'basic structure.' It follows that any amendments done to the Constitution to enable simultaneous elections will not stand judicial scrutiny because it is clearly a clandestine move towards changing the federal character of the Constitution to a unitary one.

Importantly, since the idea of holding simultaneous elections has been around for so long and has been discussed so many times in the past, there must be some really cogent reasons why this has not happened.

It is therefore advisable that this discussion on simultaneous elections be given up so that scarce resources of the nation are not wasted on discussing something that is not going to happen.

Views are personal

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