TRS, SP support simultaneous polls; DMK calls it unconstitutional
Suresh Dharur
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad/Chennai/New Delhi, July 8
In an indication of the political realignment ahead of the general elections, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in Telangana has come out strongly in support of the NDA government’s proposal to hold simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and State assemblies while its counterpart in Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has made an volte-face and opposed the idea.
The Telangana Chief Minister and TRS founder president K Chandrasekhar Rao has sent a letter to the Law Commission Chairman Justice BS Chauhan, pledging his support to the idea of synchronised polls to save resources and time and ensure unhindered focus on development.
“We all know that four to six months of time is being spent in conducting elections each time to the Lok Sabha and the State Legislatures. The entire administrative and security machinery get busy with the conduct of elections twice in a period of five years as per the current practice. The imposition of model code of conduct for such a long period is also hampering development and welfare activities being undertaken by the state government,” the chief minister said in his letter, which was handed over to Justice Chauhan by the party MP B Vinod Kumar in Delhi on Sunday.
KCR, as the chief minister is known in the political circles, pointed out that large sums of public money was being spent on frequent elections in the country. “In the above backdrop, our party is strongly in favour of holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Legislative Assemblies,” he said.
The TRS chief had in the past unequivocally backed demonetisation, Goods and Services Tax (GST) and other policies of the NDA government, triggering speculation about his party could gravitate towards the NDA. The Congress is the principal adversary of TRS in Telangana, while BJP is a marginal player.
On the other hand, the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, which had recently ended alliance with the BJP and walked out of the NDA over the Special Category status issue, has made a U-turn on the issue and opposed the idea of simultaneous polls, saying it was a “political ploy” of the saffron party to marginalise regional parties.
“The simultaneous polls will weaken leaders of regional parties across the country. No national party is in a position to form government at the Centre on its own and the support of regional parties has become mandatory. Strengthening of regional parties has become a big obstacle for national parties," the senior TDP leader and Finance Minister Y Ramakrishnudu said.
Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah of hatching “political conspiracies” to weaken the regional parties, he cautioned the people to be vigilant about such devious designs.
The regional party had supported the idea of synchronous polls before parting ways with the BJP. In fact, the Chandrababu Naidu-led government had even suggested that polls to urban and rural local bodies should be conducted within one year of the elections to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies.
The Law Commission has prepared a draft paper titled 'Simultaneous Elections—Constitutional and Legal Perspectives' and has sought opinions of all stakeholders including political parties, constitutional experts, bureaucrats and academia on the paper before finalising its report and sending it to the government. In its draft, the law panel has recommended amendments to the constitution and the Representation of People's Act, 1950, to facilitate simultaneous polls.
SP support
The proposition got a rather surprising up-vote—from Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party.
“In case public representatives switch sides or indulge in horse trading, action should be taken against them by the L-G within a week,” he said.
General elections as well as state assembly elections of Haryana, Maharashtra and Jammu & Kashmir is due next year.
‘Unconstitutional’
After the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham, it was rival Dravida Munnetra Kazagham’s turn to reject the proposal.
DMK working president MK Stalin said it his letter to the commission: “DMK are of the firm opinion that the proposed call for simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and State Legislatures goes against the basic tenets of our Constitution."
The ADMK said it would consider supporting the proposal only after 2021, when Tamil Nadu will hold its next assembly elections.
‘Managed democracy’
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rejected the idea on Sunday saying that it would turn India into a "managed democracy".
AAP leader Ashish Khetan, who appeared before the Law Commission to present his party's views, said after the meet: "We are against the idea of the so-called one-nation-one-poll because it will turn India's federal democracy into a managed democracy." He added that for simultaneous polls to Lok Sabha and state assemblies to happen, the Constitution of India will have to be "mutilated and rewritten completely".
"What will be left will be a pretense of democracy. The current dispensation will curtail the democratic rights of the people of this country. It will snatch away people's right to vote or vote out a government. There will be a domination of muscle and money power," Khetan said.
Slamming the BJP for its absence from the Law Commission's meeting, he said it was "bizarre" that the party which floated the idea is itself missing from the discussion.
‘Futile exercise’
Terming the Law Commission's consultations on simultaneous polls a "futile exercise", the JD-S on Sunday said that the ruling BJP was just "testing the waters" through it with no real intentions of reforms in the electoral process.
"We categorically told the Commission that the government must first take into consideration the recommendations given by the Law Commission in the past on electoral reforms. Not even a single recommendations has been accepted by the government so far," Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) spokesman Danish Ali said after the meeting. With agencies
