ONOE is a partisan gambit to destroy democracy

The BJP wants simultaneous elections because it wants to convert the political system into a quasi-presidential system to allow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s undoubted charisma to translate into a plebiscitary appeal

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now taken a definitive step towards initiating a system of ‘One Nation, One Election’ (ONOE), with the Union Cabinet accepting on September 18 the recommendations of the Ram Nath Kovind committee constituted a year ago. Regardless of the details, which we will explore, it is a patently anti-constitutional and anti-democratic proposal with practically no chance of fructification.

The committee, headed by the former president, has recommended 18 amendments. With the numbers stacking up the way they do in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the constitutional amendments are practically dead in the water. Let’s look at the broad issues involved.

First, for simultaneous elections to be instituted at whatever point in time — 2029, 2034, 2039, i.e., whenever Lok Sabha elections are slated — the terms of the vast majority of Assemblies will have to be terminated. Let us remember that only Odisha voted simultaneously this year, while Haryana, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, and Maharashtra have Assembly elections in 2024.

For simultaneous elections, therefore, the terms of Assemblies will have to be curtailed by several years, with states like Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, and Rajasthan being forced to endure elections in a matter of months. Alternatively, their terms will have to be extended. Both extension and curtailment will require a constitutional amendment, which we will come to in a bit.

If this highly improbable scenario comes to pass, we will have to reckon with another extremely likely problem — that a government in a state loses its majority in the House and no party or bloc of parties finds it possible to stitch together a majority. It has happened in the recent past in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.

In such a situation, elections will become inevitable unless a further constitutional amendment is authored providing for fixed-term Houses, applicable to both Assemblies and Parliament. This will, of necessity, open the door to constitutionally mandated minority governments. In the recent past, the United Kingdom legislated for fixed terms and had to hastily scrap the measure because of its unworkability. Fixed-term Houses work mostly in presidential systems.

Article 368 of the Constitution specifies that an amending law must pass separately in both Houses of Parliament by a simple majority of the total strength of the House and no less than two-thirds of the members present in the House and voting. Plus, when the amendments affect the powers of the states, they must be ratified by no less than half the states of the Union.

As we’ve observed, these stringent conditions are unlikely to be met, given that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has only 293 members in the Lok Sabha, while a two-thirds majority requires 362. In the Rajya Sabha, the NDA falls short of the mark by 30 members.

The bigger point is that the ONOE proposal is deeply anti-democratic and runs counter to the system envisaged by the framers of the Constitution with an eye precisely on securing the form and spirit of democracy. Curtailing or extending the terms of Houses is a fraudulent act that impinges on the rights of citizen electors. Even more so, fixed-term Houses are comprehensively destructive of democratic procedure by making way for minority dispensations. These initiatives cannot be allowed.

The proposal has nothing really to do with expense or convenience, though even if these were the genuine considerations, expediency can hardly be allowed to trump fundamental issues of democratic practice. The obvious reason why the BJP wants simultaneous elections is because it wants to convert the political system into a quasi-presidential system to allow Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s undoubted charisma to translate into a plebiscitary appeal. Elections are sought to be converted to referendums.

It will not have escaped the BJP top brass that the prime minister’s charisma gets short shrift when it comes to state elections, in most cases. Even when the BJP wins states, it’s usually on the back of strong local leadership and variable local circumstances. All imponderables are being sought to be eliminated.

For the present, the ONOE is just a trial balloon being floated, while dark backroom ops, characteristic of the way the BJP functions, are turbocharged. Fortunately, the proposal looks distinctly like a punctured gasbag.

(Suhit K Sen is author of ‘The Paradox of Populism: The Indira Gandhi Years, 1966-1977’.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.