The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the introduction of two bills, one to make the tenure of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies concurrent and the other to make similar amendments for Delhi and other union territory assemblies.
BillsAccording to sources, it is likely to be tabled in the ongoing winter session ending on December 20 and sent to a parliamentary committee for further scrutiny.
Interrupted by the collapse of unstable non-Congress governments between 1967 and 1971 and Indira Gandhi’s postponement of the Lok Sabha elections from 1972 to 1971, the one-shot plan required a roadmap to address the problem of what would happen if the government lost its majority.
What did the Kovind committee suggest to hold elections at once?
The Ram Nath Kovind Committee, set up by the Narendra Modi government in 2023 to suggest how Lok Sabha, assembly and municipal elections could be held simultaneously, suggested a possible roadmap in its report in March.
The panel has recommended simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies as a first step for synchronized local body elections within 100 days. For this, constitutional amendment is necessary. But, as a first step, once Parliament approves holding Lok Sabha and state elections together, the amendments do not require approval by the states.
The second phase of synchronizing municipal and panchayat elections – holding local body elections within 100 days of Lok Sabha and assembly elections – will have to be approved by at least half of the states.
Is constitutional amendment necessary?
To ensure that simultaneous elections do not violate the Constitution, the Kovind Committee has recommended amendments to Article 83 relating to the tenure of the Lok Sabha and Article 172 relating to the tenure of the State Assemblies. This is possible after the notification of the President.
If the amendment is not approved by the Parliament, the notification will be void. If the amendments are adopted, simultaneous elections will become a reality and the terms of most state governments will be cut short during the transition period.
The committee proposed that after ‘one nation, one election’ becomes a reality, say in 2029, the Lok Sabha or state assembly should be dissolved five years earlier after losing majority in the House. Have a new election. These will be “mid-term elections” and the new government will last only for the remainder of the full term of the Lok Sabha and its tenure will be called the “tenure period”.
If the Modi government decides to kickstart the process in 2034, the President will issue a notification on the day of the first sitting of the next Lok Sabha as per the Kovind plan, and the rest will be as discussed above. Assemblies cut between 2029 and 2034.
Will this lead to cut terms for some state governments?
If there is a single election in 2029, then the process should start now. Many state assemblies will have to be dissolved in 2029 before the end of their five-year term to hold simultaneous elections after Parliament amended the constitutional provisions on the tenure of the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha.
This is the roadmap it suggested, leaving it to the Center to decide when the Covid panel could be ready for elections at once. The 10 states that got new governments last year will hold elections again in 2028 and the new governments will be in power for about a year or less. These states are Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Karnataka, Telangana, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat, even if they give a clear majority to a party, are slated to go to polls in 2027 and have governments of two years or less.
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala will have three-year governments as they are scheduled to hold elections in 2026. Elections were held only in Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. This year, there may be only one government for five years.
If approved, will it reduce the burden of frequent elections?
Not necessarily. Governments can still fall at the center or in the states, new elections are held, and new governments with truncated terms can be brought to power in “mid-term” elections. But the transition to a one-time election could discourage a no-confidence motion in the government after two or three years.
How many parties supported or opposed this move before the Kovind panel?
Out of 47 parties that expressed their views on this issue, 32 parties supported and 15 parties opposed. NDA ally Telugu Desam Party, which did not give its opinion to the panel, told The Indian Express that it supported the move in principle.
All the 32 parties that supported the move before the panel were either allies of the BJP or friendly to the party. Since then the BJD has been pitted against the BJP. Of the 15 that opposed the move, there are parties outside the NDA umbrella in power in the states, including the Congress.
How are the numbers gathered in Parliament?
After the Lok Sabha elections, the parties supporting the simultaneous elections before the Kovind panel accounted for 271 MPs (including the BJP’s 240) in the Lok Sabha, just one short of a simple majority in the Lok Sabha. The NDA, including the TDP, and other parties that neither support nor oppose the simultaneous elections have a strength of 293 MPs in the Lok Sabha.
If the Lok Sabha is elected at full strength, the government needs 362 votes or the support of two-thirds of the members present and voting. Only if 439 members are present in the Lok Sabha on polling day and vote – and more than 100 remain absent – can the bill get the NDA’s two-thirds majority of 293, unless the government convinces non-NDA parties. to return it. This means that unless the opposition parties can be significantly brought on board, the Constitution Amendment Bill may end up in the lower house.
In the Rajya Sabha, the NDA has 113 MPs and the ruling alliance has 121 MPs, including six nominated MPs and two independents. The Bharat Bloc has 85 MPs and can count on the support of independent MP Kapil Sibal. The YSR Congress Party, the Biju Janata Dal, and the Bharat Rashtra Samiti, which does not belong to either bloc, have 19 MPs each. Apart from them, the AIADMK has four MPs in the Rajya Sabha and the BSP has one, and neither is inclined towards the Bharat Bloc. Currently, there are 231 Rajya Sabha MPs, and the required two-thirds quorum for a constitutional amendment, if all of them are present and voting, is 154.
What did the commission say?
When submitted to the Kovind Committee, the Election Commission (EC) sent a reply similar to that provided to the Law Commission of India, which examined the issue in March 2023.
The polling body said at least Rs 8,000 crore would be needed to buy EVMs and VVPATs to hold elections for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies simultaneously. The Election Commission has not taken into account the requirement as the election of the local body is conducted by the Provincial Election Officer. This amount does not include transportation, warehousing, first-level inspection and other related costs, according to the commission.
In a submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice in 2015, the commission listed a number of “stringents” to implement the idea. The main issue it highlighted was the bulk procurement of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines. The commission also told the parliamentary panel that “the machines will have to be replaced every 15 years, which will again incur costs”.
– with inputs from Damini Nath, Lalamani Verma and Anjishnu Das
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