Twin polls against the Constitution: EC’s key legal man

The proposal mooted by Vice President B S Shekawat and more recently by Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani is, in Mehndiratta’s view, ‘‘a non-starter.’’

For, as the Supreme Court laid down three decades ago, the Constitution cannot be so amended as to alter its basic structure.

Mehndiratta’s opinion matters because for over two decades he has been the EC’s pointman on legal affairs and he has been retained as its legal counsel even after he retired five years ago as its principal secretary and director (law).

He has also co-authored How India Votes, considered the most authoritative on election law.

‘‘The sovereign right of the people will be taken away if you mandate that elections will be held only once in five years no matter what,’’ Mehndiratta says. ‘‘The people will have no remedy but to suffer for five years. This is far from what our founding fathers intended as evident from their express provision for premature dissolution of a House.’’

One of the ‘‘anomalous repercussions’’ of a fixed term will be that a Government, he feels, may continue even if its finance Bills are defeated on the floor.

Alternatively, there may a ‘‘rotation’’ of chief ministers or prime ministers every few months till the House concerned runs its five-year course. ‘‘Is this kind of certainty necessarily in public interest?’’ Mehndiratta asks.

Even otherwise, this election law expert sees ‘‘far-reaching problems’’ for the Centre in dealing with various Assemblies in order to make a transition to the proposed fixed-term system in 2004.

The Centre, for instance, will have to extend the Assembly’s term beyond five years in the states that are due to go to polls before 2004. But then the Constitution provides that the term can be extended by one year only ‘‘while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation.’’

But if the Centre instead imposes President’s Rule in those states, the basis for invoking Article 356 is amenable to judicial review. Mehndiratta doubts whether the Supreme Court will find the synchronisation proposal a tenable ground for imposing President’s Rule.

As for the states where the Assembly would not have served even half its term by 2004 (such as Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh), Mehndiratta says the Centre will again have to resort Article 356 in the face of ‘‘very likely opposition’’ from the affected governments and legislators.

Constitutional infirmities apart, Mehndiratta admits that the synchronisation proposal will ‘‘in the long run’’ save expenditure on elections.