TL/DR: Government of India has proposed simultaneous elections in the name of stability, governance and cost-saving. This will lead to chaos and damage our democracy, unless we take action NOW.
In the past four years, the Modi government has efficiently weakened several public institutions. It has now floated one of its biggest institution-demolishers. If the Law Commission’s proposals for simultaneous polls were adopted, then Indian democracy as we know it may not exist for long. The proposed system is unheard of across the world, incompatible with the government structure envisaged by our Constitution and will lead to chaotic governance (instead of the stability it promises).
Presidential systems (like in the US) work well with set term durations. In our system of parliamentary democracy, a government’s life squarely depends on the majority support in the Lok Sabha/State assembly. Irrevocably fixing the lifetime of the legislature in a parliamentary democracy will lead to minority governments and horse trading.
Let’s take an example. Between 1996 and 1999, we had 4 governments in the centre after 3 Lok Sabha elections. Instead if the proposed plan were in vogue in 1996, the country would have been governed by a lame-duck minority government for a full 5-year term. Instead, our existing system worked beautifully in electing a majority government after 2 Lok Sabha elections. To put it simply, in a parliamentary democracy, the Lok Sabha that cannot cobble together a majority government needs to be dissolved.
The Law Commission cites the examples of South Africa, Sweden & Belgium for conducting concurrent polls. But it fails to note that all 3 countries follow Proportional Representation (PR) system instead of our First Past The Post (FPTP). In the PR system, the number of seats is directly linked to each party’s vote share. To put it simply, BJP would have got 169 seats instead of 282 in the 2014 General Elections if we had followed the PR system. In the PR system, it is inherently difficult for one party to obtain a majority and it is designed to bring together different parties in forming a coalition government. Given the difficulty in stitching together a coalition required in a PR system, levers such as fixed legislative tenure improve the overall stability of the government.
In other words, the experiment the government is foisting on our country (of running concurrent elections in a parliamentary democracy that adopts the FPTP model) has not been tried anywhere ever in the world. This government has already imperiled our economy by demonetizing 86% of our currency in one shot (again that is something no other country has ever done). This push to simultaneous elections will have a similar, if not worse, impact on our democracy.
Apart from being a totally unheard-of system, this push to simultaneous elections cannot be seated within our constitutional framework. As admitted in the draft proposal, the Founding fathers of our Constitution did not envisage concurrent elections. Imposing this artificial construct of simultaneous elections goes against the basic structure of our Constitution in several ways.
The Preamble clearly says that “We, The People of India,… give to ourselves this Constitution”. The state exists for the citizens, not vice versa. When a government loses support among the legislature in our system, it has to go. When a Money Bill is defeated in the legislature, the government has to go. But in the revised system, the government will continue to exist until an opposing governing alliance can be cobbled together. Can you imagine the level of chaos and instability we’re inviting on ourselves when we have a government that cannot decide on how to spend its money?
The Anti Defection Law, 1985 was enacted to reduce the scope for horse-trading. (Aside: There are good reasons to do away with the law. It undemocratically centralizes the power of legislature in the hands of a few party chiefs and because legislators reflect the whips’ views rather than the electorate that they should be answerable to.) But it is insidious to waive the Law selectively in the interest of forming a government or maintaining stability. The last time I checked, our Constitution does not have any Right to Stable Governance that can supersede the right to have a government that is elected democratically.
I would, in fact, argue that our Constitution inherently considers continuous elections as necessary. One third of the Rajya Sabha retires every 2 years. This ensures that the legislature does not radically change with every election. For example, consider the 1984 election that Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress swept with 49% vote share and mopping up more than 400 Lok Sabha seats. If we had operated under the simultaneous elections framework, many states would’ve also overwhelmingly elected Congress governments in 1984 and within a span of 4 years, the Congress party would have managed a comfortable majority in the Rajya Sabha. In other words, simultaneous elections provide the winner a blank cheque for a few years. This runs afoul of basic democratic principles. Let’s take the case of the US federal government. Donald Trump was elected in 2016 for a 4-year term and the House is up for elections later this year for a 4-year term. So, elections have to happen once in 2 years. And that’s a healthy feature of democracy. A regular check on the pulse of electorate so that the elected representatives’ power is kept in check. Also, like our Rajya Sabha, one-third of the US Senators have to retire every 2 years. The continuous election system is a required feature, not a bug, of democracy.
While all the above points relate to why a system of simultaneous elections is a huge problem, one should not lose sight of how the Commission wants to achieve this. The Commission wants to change the tenure of elected state legislatures. Even if a Constitutional Amendment was passed to this effect was passed by the Parliament and half the State Assemblies, it enables 2 unthinkable scenarios. Can the Centre and all the other state governments pass an amendment to curtail the tenure of the current West Bengal government without the state’s electorate having any say? Also, can an elected legislature extend its term through constitutional amendments? News reports indicate that the currently-elected UP government will get a 7-year term till 2024. When the electorate cast their votes, it was under a certain set of rules. Can those rules be changed thereafter? If you think that is ok, what if a government extends its tenure to 10 or 20 years? We may pass Constitutional Amendments to change the tenure of our elected legislature, but that will have to be done before the legislature is elected.
Lastly, let’s imagine how different a government will behave if it has an assured majority for the next 5 years across the Centre and a large number of states. Do you really believe the BJP will use that tenure to roll out long-delayed labour/economic reforms or will they be working on Mandir and cow-protection? And if you believe in the goodness of the BJP, how do you think this will pan out in the future with Rahul, Priyanka or Robert Vadra as the Prime Minister? The Constitution is nothing, if not a set of checks and balances, to ensure power does not get concentrated in one person or group. This is not about whether you like Modi or not. It is irresponsible to expect that all future governments will serve with good intentions if they get a blank cheque from the electorate.
To conclude, simultaneous elections will lead to chaos and demolish the democracy that we’ve given ourselves. On Nov 8, 2016, the Prime Minister took us by surprise. But this time, we’ve got some time to make our voices heard. The basic structure of the Constitution has stood the test of time (even if there have been several setbacks along the way). This proposed move will destroy our well-thought-out Constitution. Let’s please speak up before it is too late.
