Elections to 5 state elections have come to an end. Months of high octane campaigning had flooded TV and social media with slogans, allegations, and promises. However, with each state giving a decisive mandate, the slugfest has finally come to an end.
The last batch of elections was conducted slightly less than a year ago when another 5 states - Tamil Nadu, Kerela, West Bengal, Assam, and Puducherry - went to polls.
The next batch of elections is due in 8 months with the people of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh vote to reject or re-elect their leaders.
Just 3 months post those elections, another batch of states in the Deep-East of India (Tripura, Meghalaya, and Mizoram) go for polls.
If this wasn't enough, we will have another batch of elections after an interval of 3 months in Karnataka post the Deep-East elections. Fast forward another 6 months to December 2023, we have elections in 4 more states - Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Telangana.
Finally, after 4 rounds of elections conducted just months after one another, we will have the biggest elections of the country i.e., the Lok Sabha elections in the summer of 2024. These polls are conducted simultaneously with the state polls in 4 states.
Simultaneous Lok Sabha and state elections mean that voters go into one booth to vote for the Lok Sabha elections and then go into another room of the same booth to elect their state assembly. Thus, the people of those states get to vote twice on the same day.
If you weren't tired already, the state elections of another 3 states - Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Haryana - become due just a few months post the Lok Sabha elections.
Here is the election schedule for the duration of 2014-2024.
There are a few questions that arise in light of these continuous elections.
Do our politicians get time to think about governance when they have to fight elections after every few months?
Very little.
Why can't some of these elections be clubbed together and be done at once?
This can be done but we lack a serious statesman-like effort from the central government and a confidant and mature opposition.
PM Modi has highlighted the need for simultaneous elections multiple times in his interviews but we haven't seen a serious attempt by him to convince the opposition about this.
The opposition has also not helped matters by vehemently opposing everything that the PM says or does. The declining electoral fortunes of the opposition since PM Modi came to power has made the prospect of losing everything or multiple states at once a reality for them.
This fear is mainly in the hearts of the BJP's principal opposition - the headless Congress party. The current bout of elections has shown that they don't really have much left to lose with full governments in just 2 states - Chattisgarh and Rajasthan - both of which will go to polls together next year. So they might just end up losing everything all at once!
The primary need for simultaneous elections stems from the fact that parties - especially national parties - are always in campaign mode and very little time is left for governance. The media is constantly filled with political theatrics to lure/attract voters plus the vagaries of electoral politics do not let long-term governance become a priority. Moreover, holding fewer elections will ensure that the amount of money spent is lesser and cut out the unnecessary redundant expenditure.
The apprehensions around clubbing together of elections are unfounded as for the first 15 years or 3 election cycles of Independent India, we voted for all states and the central government together at once every 5 years. At a time when we had little experience of holding elections despite lacking the water-tight mechanism of fair elections - EVMs, VVPATs, or social/TV media scrutiny.
The Indian is very smart as he is able to distinguish between the state and the national election. She continues to vote as smartly as she did back in the 60s.
It can be seen in how Congress won a majority, albeit a reduced one, but lost many states to a coalition of opposition parties in the 1967 elections. This smart voting behaviour was again on display in Odisha 2019 elections. The BJP and BJD got almost equal seats nationally but the BJD swept the state elections with an overwhelming majority.
Thus, the opposition parties can trust their voters to vote with maturity and not be swept up in the fervour created by the national parties.
However, the simultaneous election cycle broken in the 1970s is unlikely to return - definitely not as One Nation One Election.
Since the terms of the respective state assemblies are so spread out that having all elections at once is impossible. Even two elections cycles with the Lok Sabha plus half of the states going for polls together and all the other states going to polls at the midway mark is impossible to achieve. Such a solution would require too many state assemblies to change their term. Moreover, extending the term of a particular state assembly would require a constitutional amendment - a very tough task - but there is no such requirement in case of ending assembly terms prematurely.
The White Paper by the Niti Aayog in 2018 had advocated such an arrangement. It involved 2 elections cycles - one of Lok Sabha and another one after 2.5 years. It also said that President's rule would apply in the state whose government fell before its term. This method would ensure simultaneous elections but would require a constitutional amendment - a big headache.
Thus, I have come up with a much better and simpler plan.
All we need to do is just synchronize all the elections of a particular year at once to optimize for maximum time between any two election cycles.
Here are the TWO OPTIONS.
First Option
This reduces all elections of a year into one block. Only Bihar has to significantly reduce its term while the rest of the states have to let go of a much smaller part of the term. Assemblies have been dissolved early multiple times with the latest being Telangana which advanced its elections by 6 months.
This option can be optimized further by holding all elections of 2027 or in the third year all at once. However, it requires more states to call for early elections.
Second Option
In addition to the first option mentioned above, the latter reduces the term of all 6 states highlighted by around a year.
In both cases, only the Bihar assembly term is reduced significantly by 1.5 years but with a BJP government there, it should be a manageable task for the central government.
This ensures that we have just 3 or 4 Election Cycles every 5 years. This gives a full block of 2 years or 1 year of no elections.
Unfortunately, all these options would remain hypothetical as any attempts at synchronized elections are unlikely to happen. It is only the BJP that is arguing for it as it is the most affected by it by the virtue of being a national party. Congress party is too preoccupied with its internal drama over the Gandhi family to care about all this. Moreover, most states of India have a regional party as the ruling or the primary opposition, who anyway have to face elections just once by virtue of their limited presence.
BJP also would not gain much from this as elections spread out across 5 years gives them more time for each election. However, their top leadership has been advocating for it so there seems to be intent on their part.
Media - another important and powerful stakeholder of elections - would also be a big loser if we achieve synchronized elections as their opportunities of surged viewership in election time diminishes significantly. Thus, they are unlikely to support this wholeheartedly.
Despite all this, the ball lies in the court of the central government to at least ensure all elections within a 6 month period are held together. They could begin by holding the elections to Karnataka, Deep-East states with the elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
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