One Country, One Election

Simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly polls may mean big savings of time and money, but critics warn that it will strike at the nature of parliamentary democracy.

- Ajit Kumar Jha

Should Lok Sabha and state assembly elections in India be held simultaneously? Or does it go against the very principle of parliamentary democracy, undermining the basic structure of the Indian Constitution, given the inherent assumption of a fixed term of five years for the Lok Sabha as well as the state assemblies? Is it possible to build political consensus around the issue and initiate a constitutional amendment to this effect?

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee made a pitch in support of this move, the issue has become a topic of agitated national debate. The President mooted the idea first on Teacher’s Day, September 5, while delivering a lecture to students at the Dr Rajendra Prasad Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Delhi. Two days later, on September 7, the Modi government initiated a national debate on the subject on the MyGov web portal. (MyGov is a citizen engagement platform the NDA government had launched in August 2015). Citizens were invited to submit their comments by October 15. Last checked, some 3,569 citizens had sent in their responses.

Raised by different leaders in the past, the idea of concurrent elections for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies has been discussed threadbare by a few official commissions. Namely, the Venkatachalaiah Commission in 2002 and the Natchiappan Commission in 2015. Historically, the first four Lok Sabha elections—in 1952, 1957, 1962 and 1967—were held concurrently with elections to the state legislatures, with only the rare exception. The dismissal of non-Congress governments in various states in 1968 and 1969 by the Indira Gandhi-led Congress regime, changed the cycle.