Advantage LARGE National Parties

Simultaneous elections will create limited space and voice for smaller states thereby adversely affecting federalism

- Vikas Kumar

THE government has reopened the debate on the need to introduce simultaneous elections to both the State assemblies and the Parliament. Proponents of One Nation, One Election (ONOE) assume that this will offer substantial economies of scale and scope that will help economise the administrative costs of holding elections, which include expenses on training and deployment of personnel, awareness campaigns, transporting electronic voting machines (EVMs) and deployment of security forces.

But are the potential savings all that substantial? The government has not shared any estimates about this so far. Extrapolating the figures provided by the Election Commission (EC) during an earlier iteration of this debate, it can be said that Parliamentary elections cost about 5,000 crores and assembly elections in a large state cost about 500 crores. Even if the cost of purchasing more EVMs for simultaneous elections is ignored, the savings are unlikely to exceed Rs 50 per citizen over a period of five years.