Should India have simultaneous elections? 

Should India have simultaneous elections? 

Context

Simultaneous elections in India

Why should India have simultaneous elections?

• Holding simultaneous elections will ensure consistency, continuity and governance
• MCC is detrimental to developmental work
  • Five years mean five years of stable governance. A system must be evolved to give a period of five years to the incumbent government to focus on governance
  • If we are occupied with Vidhan Sabha elections, Zilla Parishad elections, Panchayat elections, and municipal elections throughout the year, where is the time for developmental work, with the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) kicking in every time these elections are held?
• Curbing corruption
  • Frequent elections provide opportunities to unscrupulous elements to propagate corruption and create disruption in normal public life impacting the delivery of essential services.
  • The way out is to cut the role played by money in elections, and this can come about only through a ceiling on political party expenditure
• Huge burden on resources
  • Frequent elections act as a burden on the resources, both in terms of financial and manpower requirements
  • Security personnel and government officials are effectively put on election duty for many months in a year
  • A case in point is the recurring engagement of teachers for election duty, as a result of which students suffer
  • Simultaneous elections can bring the much-needed operational efficiency in this exercise
• Threat to communal peace: Elections have become too divisive. Communal riots and caste disturbances are deliberately created around election time to ensure polarisation of communities for electoral gains
• Convenience to Election Commission: As regards logistical and administrative feasibility, simultaneous elections would be most convenient for the Election Commission. Since voters, polling personnel, and polling booths are all the same, it does not matter if the voter is casting her vote for one election or two or three

Why simultaneous elections in India is not a good idea?

• Simultaneous elections go against the spirit of the Constitution and against the spirit of federalism

• Burden on the resources
  • Even if simultaneous elections are held the financial burden for state parties would still be the same as
  • So this idea can be seen as a way out for national parties
  • Moreover, the logistic requirement of movement of security forces would still remain the same thereby creating no change in the lengthy schedule of the elections
• Problem of MCC: This problem emerges mainly because parties and governments fail to arrive at a consensus on the scope of the code of conduct and the meaning of what constitutes policymaking and what constitutes distribution of patronage
• No-Motion will be meaningless

• • If we enforce the system of simultaneous elections, we would need to curtail the legislature’s power to unseat a government
  • It would be mandatory to have a ‘constructive vote of no-confidence’. This means that no opposition party would be able to table a no-confidence motion unless it has the capacity to also simultaneously form a new government
  • The fundamental instrument of the no-confidence motion would thus be effectively taken away
• What if central government loses majority? Suppose simultaneous elections are held but the government lses its majority in the Lok Sabha, as Atal Bihari Vajpayee did within 13 days in power, will we then hold a new set of elections in all the 29 States too, even if they have an absolute majority? Why should the States suffer for the electoral decisions taken at the Centre
• Repeated elections keep legislators on their toes and increases accountability

Why it is a complicated matter?

Holding simultaneous elections is certainly desirable but not feasible

• It is certainly desirable but not feasible. For it to be feasible, we need a political consensus, which is not easy to achieve.
• Who would want the term of the House to be reduced? The ruling dispensation would not like a reduction from five years and the Opposition would not like an extension beyond five years. That’s why a consensus is an uphill task

Conclusion

Arguments given in the favor of the simultaneous elections are as worthy as are the arguments against it. So all in all it is a complicated matter which requires political consensus