No woman, no southerner
THE WEEK India|September 17, 2023
Are we voting too often? The government thinks so. It has asked a committee of wise men headed by former president Ram Nath Kovind “to examine the issue of simultaneous elections and make recommendations...”
R. PRASANNAN
No woman, no southerner

We started the democratic process in 1952 with simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and to the assemblies. The cycle got broken after 1967, says the law ministry resolution appointing the committee.

Wrong. The pattern had got upset in 1959 when Kerala’s 1957-elected assembly was dismissed mid-term, and polls ordered. By the end 1960s, as new states took birth, as governments lost majority, as more assemblies got dissolved before time, the pattern got disrupted. In 1971, the Lok Sabha was dissolved before time; in 1976, it got an (Emergency) extension. In the chaotic late 1980s and the 1990s, legislative life expectancy got so low that president R. Venkataraman mooted ideas such as security of tenure for legislatures.

Since then several statesmen—L.K. Advani, A.B. Vajpayee, B.S. Shekhawat to name a few— and several commissions and committees have talked about it, but found no consensus.

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