One Nation One Election justification holds no water

On December 12, news reports suggested that the Union Cabinet cleared the ‘One Nation One Election’ Bill (no details of it were put out in the public). The Narendra Modi government reversed its decision to introduce two One Nation One Election Bills in Parliament on December 16; it will be introduced on December 17.

On September 18, home minister Amit Shah was quoted as saying that India would see “a giant stride towards landmark electoral reforms with the Union Cabinet accepting the recommendations of the High-Level Committee on One Nation One Election”, which would “bolster our democracy through clean and financially efficient elections and accelerate economic growth through more productive allocation of resources”.

Financially efficient elections and more productive allocation of resources for acceleration of economic growth have, thus, been touted as two principal arguments to justify the legislative policy preference of ‘One Nation One Election’.

The One Nation One Election Bill seeks to essentially lay down a path forward for holding Lok Sabha and Assembly elections simultaneously.

The ‘financially efficient’ argument assumes that simultaneous elections would cost less. Lesser time under the model code of conduct (MCC) under simultaneous elections is supposed rationale for supporting acceleration in economic growth.

Are these arguments valid? Will there be any savings in election expenditures if Lok Sabha and all Assembly polls are held simultaneously? Does economic policy-making really suffer on account of the MCCs? Is there a better alternative than holding all elections together?

Lesser expenditure argument is bogus

The Government of India incurs election expenditures under three heads: a. establishment expenditure of the election commission (EC), b. organisation of elections, and c. purchase of electoral voting machines (EVMs). To get a better view about these expenditures, we need to look into election expenditures over a five-year cycle.

During Modi 2.0 (2019-2024), the government incurred a total election-related expenditure of Rs 16,255 crore or Rs 3,251 crore per annum — Rs 300 crore on EC establishment, Rs 1,916 crore on organisation of elections, and Rs 1,035 crore on EVMs.

The total expenditure on elections is miniscule — only 0.09 per cent of the total Union government expenditure of Rs 37.35 trillion per annum during Modi 2.0. The Government of India spends many times more on several development programmes — Rs 60,000 crore per annum on PM-KISAN. Given this, the government need not worry about the peanuts it spends on election expenditures.

Dig a little deeper and it becomes apparent that simultaneous elections would not lead to any savings in the current level of expenditures either. Simultaneous elections would require at least twice the EVMs, leading to more than doubling the expenditure on EVMs. The EC establishment expenditure cannot go down either.

Moreover, even election organisation expenditure will also not get reduced as simultaneous polls cannot effect any savings on any election-related processes.

Thus, the ‘financially efficient’ elections argument for mooting ‘One Nation One Election’ is simply bogus.

Accelerating economic growth argument is far-fetched

Governments can and need to front-load economic reforms and growth supporting policy decisions early in their five-year tenure, and not leave these for the fag-end when the MCC comes into force.

Incidentally, it is only the populist type of measures which the MCCs seek to stop, that too increasingly unsuccessfully. Over the last few years, the EC has considerably reduced the MCC, which has made it lose its relevance for even populist measures — recall what recently happened in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jharkhand.

The Government of India has not felt constrained in making any economic policy decision while Assembly elections take place. Try to recollect which economic policy decision was delayed during Modi 2.0 because of a state election!

This is an invented argument with no fact case to support.

Primary objective is political

The prime rationale for ‘One Nation One Election’ is political.

Election outcomes are influenced by three primary forces — power of narratives, constituency arithmetic, and control over voting.

Nationally dominant parties, particularly the ruling one, tend to believe that the power of their narratives and control over voting process can swing the voters of regionally dominant parties in their favour if Lok Sabha and Assembly polls are held simultaneously.

It is a different matter that this expectation may not necessarily work in favour of national parties every time.

Consider holding assembly polls in two batches

Holding Assembly polls every now and then is administratively inefficient and disturbing. The Assembly polls should be bunched into two batches for this reason alone.

One set of Assembly polls can be held along with the Lok Sabha elections and the other set held midway the five-year term of the Lok Sabha. Such an arrangement will take away almost all pains of the current day Assembly polls, and provide an occasion to have a mid-term opinion on the performance of the Union government.

Make it a national consensus

The Bill introduced in Lok Sabha should be referred to a select committee of both the houses of Parliament with a mandate to hold widespread consultations to build a national consensus on streamlining holding of Assembly elections.

(Subhash Chandra Garg is former Finance & Economic Affairs Secretary, and author of ‘The Ten Trillion Dream’ and ‘We Also Make Policy’.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.