Mission impossible

Mission impossible

Context

The proposal for simultaneous elections involves too many practical difficulties

What has happened?

In principle, simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies have the benefits of saving poll expenditure and helping ruling parties focus on governance instead of being constantly in election mode 

Difficult to implement

• The flip side is that it is nearly impossible to implement, as it would mean arbitrarily curtailing or extending the term of existing legislatures to bring their election dates in line with the due date for the rest of the country
• This would be the most difficult change to execute, as such a measure would undermine federalism as well as representative democracy 

Alternative by the Law Commission

• Categorize States based on proximity to the next general election, and have one round of State Assembly polls with the next Lok Sabha election, and another round for the remaining States 30 months later
• This would mean that India would have a set of elections every two and a half years

Problem: But governments have been brought down or have collapsed on their own, leading to mid-term polls in different States and even at the Centre in different years

Conclusion

Given the difficulties involved in shifting to simultaneous elections, we may have to live with the reality that some part of the country will go to polls every few months