In the Indian Union, elections to Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha do not happen simultaneously at present. The assembly and parliamentary elections started simultaneously in the 1951-52 period, being the first elections with universal adult franchise in the Indian Subcontinent. After the republic was inaugurated in 1950, a system of state governments and the union government, with a separation of powers, was conceived. That is the core of federalism in India. Thus, the elections to the Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha are essentially elections to representative bodies that would represent the people’s views with respect to the specific and separate powers vested in the state and union governments. In time, Lok Sabha’s and Vidhan Sabhas in various states developed a natural course of their own, responding to specific realities and contexts. Thus, mid-term elections for the Vidhan Sabhas as well as the Lok Sabha, various periods of President’s Rule and other political contexts decoupled the Vidhan Sabha elections from those for the Lok Sabha and the various Vidhan Sabha elections from each other. And that continues.
Prime Minister Modi's support for simultaneous elections has outraged some federalists in India
No yearning for stability can override the representative character of a government
Recently, Narendra Modi floated the plan of simultaneous Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha elections. This is not a new idea. Earlier, the erstwhile BJP-stalwart Lal Krishna Advani had also argued for this, during the earlier NDA regime. That call had few takers. This time around, Narendra Modi seems to not want to leave it simply as a random declaration of intent but has followed it up in various ways. He has raised this demand in at least two interviews, which in itself is a testament to the importance of this issue to the ruling party. His government set up a committee in the law ministry to study the feasibility of simultaneous elections. The Law Ministry sought the Election Commission of India’s comments on the ‘Feasibility of Holding Simultaneous Elections to the House of People (Lok Sabha) and State Legislative Assemblies’. The ECI in response stated, “In so far as the Election Commission is concerned, the issues involved in holding simultaneous elections are not insurmountable for it. If there is political consensus and will across the board, needless to say that the Commission supports the idea of considering simultaneous elections”. Narendra Modi has also sought the “people’s opinion” on the issue via the ‘mygov.in’ portal till the 15th of October. In his recent ‘class’ as a teacher on Teacher’s Day, President Pranab Mukherjee endorsed the idea and has said, “The Election Commission can also put in their idea and efforts on holding the polls together and that will be highly beneficial”. What he left out was for whom it would be beneficial and how. There are strong reasons why few except pan-Indian parties are enthusiastic about this plan. As far as the sanctity of electoral democracy and federalism are concerned, it is a dangerous plan, at many levels.
For this, slowly all state assembly elections have to be brought in sync from their present temporal offsets. To start this plan in the first place, certain state assemblies will have to be elected way before their normal term ends while other state assembly elections would have to be held much after their term. A cursory look at the indicative schedule of such a plan, if it were to be instituted in two phases as envisaged by the parliamentary panel, would have had, as Phase 1, elections of state assemblies around the 15th of November 2016. This would have meant that at least 6 states would have assembly elections more than 400 days before their term ends, making a farce of the mandate by which they were elected in the first place. Phase 1 is out of question. Phase 2, which was proposed to be held around the 3rd of June 2019, would have at least 15 states holding their elections more than 120 days before or after assembly term, with some states going to polls more than one-and- a-half years after their constitutional term! And all this for reasons of cost cutting and vaguely expressed sentiments about governance efficiency! What is lost in the process is that elections are first and foremost about democratic representation. Everything else is secondary. If expenses were a paramount consideration, then why even maintain law courts or any other institution that is supposed to uphold rights of a citizen? Are those rights negotiable due to expenses? While the Congress has called such a plan ‘impractical’, Trinamool has clearly termed it anti-democratic and unconstitutional.
L. K. Advani had proposed a similar plan in the 1990s
As far as the sanctity of electoral democracy and federalism are concerned, it is a dangerous plan
Even if one were able to sync all assembly and parliamentary elections at some time in the future, how does one stop the decoupling cycle to start once again, as it did earlier after the initial synced start in 1952? Here, we must consider the solution proposed in the so-called Shekhawat plan, as mooted by the deceased BJP leader and former Vice-President Bhairosingh Shekhawat. A government falls when a no-confidence motion wins in the house. If no alternative government can be formed, that necessitates new elections. According to the Shekhawat plan, an alternative government formation plan or a confidence motion in a new government must necessarily accompany a no-confidence motion. This plan is an attack on people’s sovereign right to choose how they want, when they want and whom they want. Under this preposterous anti-democratic idea, the people’s representatives - and hence the people - have no right to pull down a government if there is no alternative at hand, even if the incumbent government has lost the confidence of the majority in the house! Thus people’s representatives cannot express lack of confidence in a government in isolation. However, lack of confidence in a government by itself is a phenomenon and this plan wants to ride roughshod over the sovereign right of the people to express lack of confidence in a government.
No yearning for stability can override the representative character of a government and hence, democratic opinion. Prioritising stability over democracy is not only anti-people but also deeply authoritarian. The Anti-Defection law that puts parties before people’s representatives has already hugely compromised the representative character of elected representatives. Simultaneous elections and implementation of the Shekhawat plan will erode ‘representativeness’ even further.
The simultaneous election plan is a direct blow to democracy and separation of sovereign powers between state assemblies and union parliament, where people will be deliberately made to vote simultaneously to elect assemblies that are autonomous and different, in the same campaign cycle. This is a very dangerous idea, against federalism and in support of “pan-Indian” parties whose agendas would typically dominate in an election cycle. The inevitable dominance of “national” issues, due to the greater amount of media focus and money power in play, will seriously hurt the breadth of debates on people’s issues that happen around an election. Syncing all elections to the parliamentary election stems from a serious misunderstanding about the nature of the Indian Union. Even the term ‘centre’ is a misnomer. India is a union. The Union and the states don’t have a spoke-and-wheel relationship. There is no centre. The Union is a round-table with certain powers. The Lok Sabha (which represents the Union government and manages subjects under Union control) and the Vidhan Sabhas (which represents the state governments of the various constituent states of the Union and manages subjects under state control) do not share any hierarchical relationship – both are equal and sovereign with respect to the subjects under their exclusive jurisdiction. They represent different concerns and more importantly, different distances from the lived reality of the people. Thus, the relegation of state issues to the background would make elections more about distant issues and less about everyday realities that are typically addressed in state assembly elections. This obviously will selectively hurt state-based pro-federalism parties who fight “pan Indian” parties in their states. Empirical evidence shows that in states where simultaneous assembly and parliamentary elections have been held since 1999, voters opted for the same party in both elections in 77% of constituencies. The hugely divergent results in Bihar for the non-simultaneous elections to assembly and parliamentary elections show why the non-simultaneity is important. Very different issues held sway during the two elections in Bihar. Simultaneous elections would reduce the complex realities of a billion-plus people into a referendum on the incumbent Union government. This is why very few pro-federalism parties are enthusiastic about the plan. A comparable large, multi-state entity, like USA, which has a strong federal structure, has no concept of simultaneous elections.
Some commentators feel that the proposals for simultaneous slections privilege cost-cutting over representation
More than the cost of holding elections, the greater danger to democracy is the role of money power during elections. Parliamentary elections have increasingly witnessed a strategy of massive corporate funding during the election, thus skewing outcomes. Non-simultaneous elections reduce the amount of available dirty money that can be poured into determining the issues and changing the outcome of a particular election while simultaneous elections hugely multiply the bang that can be obtained for the election cycle through dirty bucks. It is no secret that big money and its influence is more entrenched in “pan-Indian” parties that are typical Lok Sabha winners. It is understandable why corporate-funded political think tanks who abhor the possibility of a third front or federal front dispensation for reasons of “stability”, are also writing long position papers and holding “discussions” in support of simultaneous elections.
Non-simultaneous elections have some real positives. The people’s mood changes with time. Five years is an arbitrary cut-off in judging that. Lack of simultaneity throws up opportunities to people to express opinion changes before that. Thus, when the ruling party of the Union government loses non-synced state elections, it provides a signal to the rulers and a necessary counterweight to the people. It makes the political scene more representative.
Reforms are, indeed, needed in how elections are conducted. For starters, the fact that central forces that are under the Union government are deployed in all elections is a problem. One can move to a situation where assembly elections would be conducted under external multi-state police forces and not central forces. However, the “reform” agenda in having simultaneous elections comes from an impetus for concentrating and centralising power. It is not accidental that BJP supports not only simultaneous elections but also has toyed with the idea of a presidential form of government. Any move towards centralizing the election process in a pluralist multi-national super-state like the Indian Union is unhealthy for democracy.
Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is a member of faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com
