Some recommendations in the “one nation, one election” report cleared by the Union government are flawed, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi told PTI on Friday.
The Union Cabinet had on Wednesday accepted the report by a high-level committee recommending the simultaneous elections plan.
The committee, headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, was set up by the Centre in September 2023 to look into the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections. The report it submitted in March recommended a two-step approach for implementing the plan.
While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has for long been pushing for simultaneous elections, the Opposition parties have criticised the government, saying that the plan undermines federalism.
In the first step, the panel said that simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies could be held initially. In the second step, municipality and panchayat elections could be organised within a hundred days of the elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies.
The panel said there is a need to bring back the cycle of simultaneous elections as had been held during the initial decades after Independence. Holding elections every year “casts a huge burden on the government, businesses, workers, courts, political parties, candidates contesting elections, and civil society at large”, the report said.
Several key recommendations in the report were “flawed”, PTI quoted Quraishi as saying.
The former chief election commissioner said that the simultaneous polls would exclude panchayat elections, which represent a significant number of locally elected officials. “The entire country is being shaken up for simultaneous elections while ignoring over 30 lakh elected representatives at the local level,” Quraishi told PTI.
The panchayat polls, being held separately within hundred days of the elections for the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, contradicts the essence of simultaneous polls, he said. “Conducting separate elections just months apart will create significant logistical challenges and voter fatigue,” he added.
The need for about 40 lakh additional Electronic Voting Machines to hold the polls simultaneously poses significant financial and logistical hurdles, Quraishi was quoted as saying.
“And one thing which is in favour of simultaneous elections is that for all three tiers, the voter is the same, the polling booth is the same, the people who conduct the election are same,” he said. “Now the Election Commission has flagged a logistical problem that they will require three times the number of EVMs [Electronic Voting Machines] and the VVPATs [Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail]. So just calculate, thousands of crores of rupees will be required.”
Quraishi, who served as the chief election commissioner between July 2010 and June 2012, urged lawmakers to discuss the challenges.
The proposal will have to be cleared by Parliament for it to be implemented. It is also expected that it will require a constitutional amendment, which would have to be ratified by the state legislatures.
On Wednesday, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that an implementation group will be formed to implement the report through legal processes.
While Vaishnaw did not provide a timeline or details of how the plan will be implemented, he said that the government will work towards creating consensus on the matter.
Also read:
- ‘One nation, one election’ plan presents a challenge for the Opposition – and for the BJP
- Simultaneous polls will weaken the only check on Indian politicians: Elections
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