Federalism, democracy, and the idea of one nation one election

**Yugant Rane and Sarvesh Nayak

Abstract:

Proceeding on the premises that the electoral process is the heart and soul of the democracy, and any tampering with the same would lead to compromise in the idea of democratic India envisaged by the constitution, the authors through this essay shall attempt to establish that the elections are of paramount importance in the governance of this nation and they cannot be adjusted for material considerations. The rights associated with the citizen’s duties towards the strengthening Indian democracy cannot be curtailed to achieve some alternate benefit which is not a legitimate state interest. Since conducting the first cycle of simultaneous elections at different levels would logically imply prolonging or shortening of the tenure of various elected bodies, thereby resulting in the unilateral alteration of the contract entered into by the electorates and the elected regarding the representation of the will of the people for a certain period of time, it is against the constitutional safeguards provided in this behalf, and more importantly, the breach of the promise by the state to allow the expression of the will of the people within a particular time limit. Even for the subsequent cycles of the simultaneous elections, the elected bodies shall be unnecessarily obliged to continue despite no sufficient conduciveness to do so, and this would ultimately deter the exercise of certain essential democratic practices like testing the confidence of the government. It is also argued that any tinkering with the existing election system in India would adversely affect the limited federalism that the constitution promises to this union of states. Lastly, the authors attempt to establish that even though most of the constitutional hindrances to the idea of one nation one election can be removed by constitutional amendments, such amendments may be against the basic structure of the constitution.

Introduction:

India, constitutionally, the Union of States, and popularly, the world’s largest democracy, presently accommodates approximately one billion voters. The democratic system of the country does complete justice to the constitutional commitment of liberty, equality and fraternity by incorporating universal adult franchise that allows every citizen of India having attained the 18 (formerly 21) years of age to vote ever since its first elections after it became a republic. To further encourage their participation, the state also declares either a full-day or a half-day leave on the dates of election. All this may be sufficient to convince anyone about the importance of voting in a democracy, or maybe not.

Since India is a vast country, from the administration perspective, it has a hierarchical structure of democratic administration institutions and if we consider the elections of each of these institutions, with a little stretch one may be fine to conclude that almost at all the time, there is some or the other election going on in one or the other part of the country. These elections involve utilisation of large amounts of financial and human resources. Numerous institutions, bodies, and authorities are deployed to carry out these elections smoothly, and since most of these institutions do not have elections as their primary duty, it also adversely affects their overall functioning in their primary domains. According to this NITI Aayog Discussion paper, 10.75 Government Personnel are needed for each polling booth and there were more than 10 lakh booths for the 2019 general election which roughly amounts to 1 crore government personnel on polling duty. The report from Centre for Media Studies showed that a total of 60,000 crores were spent on 2019 general election making Indian elections the most expensive in the world. From this total amount the ECI/Central Government spent around 15%. Furthermore, due to imposition of the Model Code of Conduct, the Government cannot announce new schemes or policies except routine administration.

In light of these, a suggestion is often put forth by some of the political groups led by BJP that all the elections should be held simultaneously. The effect of this proposal being accepted would be that all the elections in the country including the parliamentary, state, and local elections shall be conducted in a single cycle. This idea is popularly called “One Nation One Election” and it has received considerable amount of consideration at various scholarly forums like law commission, parliamentary committees, NITI Ayog, etc. The proposal of “One Nation One Election” as ideal as it may sound in terms of financial and other benefits it offers, also needs to be examined from the perspective of preserving the constitutional and democratic values.

What Are the Challenges against the idea of One Nation One Election?

Firstly, It is argued that even though, unification of the election cycle may dilute some of the aspects of the problem such as busyness of the political and government leaders in the election campaigning and the frequency of polarising speeches, it does not have similar impact on the economic front of the problem regarding the expenditure of financial and human resources. To conduct the various levels of elections within a single short duration, we would need a very large number of electronic voting machines, and all the other ancillary infrastructure to maintain those EVMs, VVPAD facilities, and the resources to count votes of those many machines.

Secondly, regarding the impact of model code of conduct on the development issues, it is argued that in any case every state will have at least 4 months of model code of conduct imposed therein if the central election and the state elections are held separately, and holding them simultaneously would just bring this number to 2 months. In other words, the high frequency of the elections throughout India does not impact the development throughout India at the similar frequency, and only in case of the union elections, the MCC is imposed on the entire country, and in case of individual state elections, only the concerned states are affected.

Thirdly, since the idea is not something which has not been implemented in the country before, history has proved certain logical and obvious difficulties to sustain such a system of election for long.

The constitutional challenges mainly relate to the democratic principles and the ideas of federalism. Since, the constitution of India calls the country as the “Union of States” and the preamble declares this union of states to be democratic; For a country with such a vast and diverse territory encompassing equally if not more vast population practising equally diverse cultures, both the ideas I.E. Democracy and federalism are critical as far as the constitutional idea of India has to sustain itself. Therefore, any idea, may it be offering whatsoever benefits, cannot be allowed to sustain if it even faintly attacks these principles.

One Nation One Election, an attack on democratic principles?

From the very first line of the preamble, various provisions of the constitution conspicuously prescribe and endorse the electoral form of parliamentary democratic government. Moreover, the significance of this system is further highlighted by the safeguards provided by the constitution for the smooth conduct and against any interference with these elections.    It is no surprise, that when the full bench of the supreme court sat down to lay down the basic structure of the constitution, several judges, in their separate but concurring opinions, also included electoral parliamentary democracy therein. Later in another case, the majority on a 5 judge bench of the supreme court expressly recognized it to be so. Justice Khanna, one of those judges in the majority, also included free and fair elections in the basic structure of the constitution. Since implementation of ONOE is a very complex process, it shall require several amendments to the constitution. As the idea has a very direct link with the electoral democracy, whether or not those amendments, or even the plain implementation of the idea would be consistent with the aforementioned basic structure of the constitution is a matter of concern. In our preliminary analysis, the following 3 aspects of the democracy in India would be directly impacted by the implementation of ONOE.

• The constitution provides for the principle of collective responsibility as an integral feature of parliamentary democracy in India. This principle simply prescribes that any executive acquires and sustains its legitimacy through the confidence enjoyed by it in the legislature, in particular, the lower house of the legislature and it cannot continue once it ceases to enjoy this confidence. Impliedly, if a no-confidence motion is passed against any government, it would lead to dissolution of that government, and in case no alternate fraction of the lower house has the majority, the elections would become an immediate necessity. Now put this scenario in the context of ONOE, wherein the dates of election are pre-decided, the house cannot afford such a dissolution as it would mean absence of an elected government for that state till the such pre-decided date, thereby unjustly deterring one of the finest democratic practices followed to keep a check on the executive. Furthermore, the concept of constructive No-confidence Motion, as suggested by some scholarly bodies, which calls for every  No-confidence Motion to be accompanied by a confidence motion for an alternate government, is a foul play on a key principle of democracy, as the object of a No-Confidence Motion in any democracy like ours is always to check the confidence of the legislature in the executive; and change of a government is just one of the 2 ancillary consequences of the successful passage of such a motion. Such restrictions will incentivize the minority governments to continue despite having no will of the people backing them. The verbatim of the constitution conspicuously convey the intent of the constitution-makers to provide primacy to the will of the people in the matter of change or continuation of any government; and any tampering with the same is inconsistent with the democracy envisioned by those scholars.

• Since literacy, especially political literacy, is too low in India, hardly people understand the exact necessity and the consequence of their vote. Even the concepts like Rajya Sabha or Vidhan Sabha sound confusing to many educated persons. And if we go one step forward in examining this problem of understanding, we may find that it is difficult for many to comprehend the true nature of a political party and candidates; and the relationship between the two. A considerable space has been spent in the majority judgement of the Electoral bonds case to throw light on the vulnerability of the Indian voters. In light of these concerns, when such an ignorant and vulnerable voter is asked to cast different votes for many distinct candidates on a single day, with each of those votes having separate necessity and consequence, it is hardly logical to presume that such a voter would be able to comprehend the complexity of the entire situation and would be able to exercise his right freely and fairly. Therefore, it is argued that this will put the voter in a more vulnerable position and will unduly interfere with the free and fair exercise of his right to vote. Since access to relevant information to exercise the right to vote has been read into fundamental rights, we argue that access also includes the ability to comprehend, and therefore, if (ONOE) is proved to dilute this comprehension power of the majority of voters, it shall be unconstitutional.

• As far as any constitutional amendment either allowing the extension or contraction of the term of any elected body is concerned, it would be a direct attack on the will of the people duly expressed through elections. The majority of the people through direct voting elect the legislators for a specific period of time to represent them. In a way it is like an agency contract between the people (the principal) and the legislators (the agents), therefore, any alteration with the tenure of this contract would be an illegitimate novation in case of extension and a unilateral breach in case of the contraction. The will of the people in a democracy is supreme, and therefore, any disregard of it of this nature would be a direct attack on the democracy itself.

One Nation One Election- An attack on Federalism?

India is a federal country with unitary bias, which is also a part of the basic structure of the Constitution. States in India have distinct powers derived from list 2 and 3 of Seventh schedule of the Constitution. According to the SR Bommai judgement of the Supreme Court, states have autonomy in various important subjects like finance, education, law and order, public health etc. In order to unify the election cycle across the country, necessarily the tenures of several legislative assemblies would require extension or contraction. For instance, if we plan to implement this concept in the year 2029, when, in ordinary circumstances, the Lok Sabha poles are expected to be; then we will need to extend the tenures of all the assemblies ending soon before this time, and shorten the tenures of other assemblies ending after this time.

Article 83 of the Constitution deals with tenure of the Lok Sabha and Article 172 is corresponding provision for tenure of State Assemblies which is five years from first sitting. Article 83 and 172 expressly use the words “No Longer” to bar the continuation of the lower house beyond such 5 year period, and the situation provided for by the proviso is the only one in that regard. The factuality of this intent of the constitution-makers is further endorsed by the fact that the initial version of these articles did not include the phrase “No Longer” and it was subsequently added after due deliberations, specifically to limit the scope of the proviso. Thus, with the extensions barred, only 2 options remain. First, to amend the constitution and add one more circumstance to allow extension, and second, to explore the feasibility of shortening the tenure. With regards to the second option, the constitution uses the word “unless dissolved earlier” in articles 83 and 172. However, there are very few constitutional situations, wherein the assembly can be dissolved earlier, such as absence of a clear majority for any party or coalition, proclamation of emergency under article 356, etc. Curtailing or extending tenures of state assemblies to align with Lok Sabha is a threat to independence of state governments and states will not be able to run effective governments, ultimately diluting their position in the federal system of governance enshrined in the constitution, and no material considerations can justify the same.

Not only this, but this curtailment or extension of tenures of legislative assemblies does not solve the problem of policy paralysis due to frequent elections. If due to any unforeseeable circumstance, the tenure of any assembly or the Lok Sabha is disturbed, similar extension or curtailment may become necessary. As per experts, to continue with the cycle of One Nation One Election a new government formed in any state or Centre should be allowed to continue for a remainder period which will lead to more elections than currently happening and hence this solution is not viable.

This system of One Nation One Election will also adversely affect regional parties, which are important for Indian democracy. In India, three tier democracy is present and each level has its own powers and functions. Elections for different levels are fought on different issues. If India starts with the system of simultaneous elections, then issues which are important for state level politics will take a back seat and national level issues like nationalism, defence will take over. This will also adversely affect regional parties which have presence in one or two states and also affect voter’s choices. National parties which are present in more states will gain undue advantage.

Every state in the country has different issues due to geographical, social and economic differences and hence it becomes important to have voices of regional parties in Parliament to raise these issues. System of simultaneous elections will remove these voices from parliament.

Conclusion and way forward:

In light of the aforesaid, it can be safely concluded that the concept of ONOE, in its present form, is inconsistent with the essential constitutional values like democracy and federalism and therefore should not be proceeded with in any case. The problems arising out of the enormous scale and frequency of elections can be addressed through measures like:

• Imposing a limit on expenditure of resources;

• Restricting the participation of high government officials and government machinery in the election campaigning;

• Stringent policing of election speeches, etc.

The state or the constitution gives us some rights, not because it can take away those for meeting some exigencies, but in fact to keep those rights always to avoid any such situation affecting the development of every individual and ultimately the state.

**Yugant Rane is a recent graduate from Government Law College, Mumbai (Batch of 2025). His research interests include constitutional law, public policy, and international law, and he aspires to work in the field of policy-making. He has authored articles on topics such as cooperative federalism and custodial violence.

**Sarvesh Nayak is an aspiring academician and a law graduate from Government Law College, Mumbai (Batch of 2025). His research interests lie in constitutional law, administrative law, and public law, with a particular focus on policy formation and implementation. He has published papers on topics such as religious freedoms and the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). Additionally, Sarvesh has delivered awareness lectures on voting rights, disability rights, RTI (Right to Information), and the importance of democracy in various colleges around Mumbai.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.