Abhishek Manu Singhvi: ‘One Nation, One Election will face serious Constitutional challenges … it violates the Basic Structure’

The Centre is set to table contentious Bills to enable simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state Assemblies. What are your views?

Firstly, One Nation, One Election is a superficially appealing concept, especially to the drawing room and chattering classes. It appeals to our sense of order, uniformity, discipline and clockwork timing. But you cannot impose such concepts artificially on underlying fundamentals, like the will of the people, democratic mandate, etc.

Secondly, at the heart of the Bill is a provision to suggest that if any state or parliamentary Assembly ends sooner than its five-year term, the newly elected entity, after a midterm election, shall not continue for a further five years but shall be deemed to end at the expiry of the unexpired portion of the previous Assembly.

Why do you think ‘One Nation, One Election’ is an artificial imposition of a concept on the will of the people and democratic mandate?

As I said, the will of the people and its representatives mandated by a fresh election is being nullified by an artificially reduced term against the popular mandate.

The government is said to be planning to send the draft Bills to a Joint Committee of Parliament. Do you, as a senior lawyer, foresee legal challenges?

I have no doubt that the amendment will face serious Constitutional challenges, especially on the point that it is impinging upon the concepts of a level playing field and of democracy itself by interfering with the electoral process based upon the will of the people. Hence, it is violative of the Basic Structure of the Indian Constitution.

The Congress is opposed to One Nation, One Election and so are many INDIA bloc parties. So, is there no middle ground as of now?

More Indian population and geographical space at the state level is occupied or governed by regional parties. This artificial synchronisation of the tenures of state Assemblies is a clear threat and infringement to the autonomy and very existence of regional parties and directly undermines federalism, which was held in the 1990s by the Supreme Court in Bommai’s case.

Also, there is no evidence to suggest that there is, even remotely, the requisite two-thirds majority inside Parliament or at the state level. This is cumulatively required since it affects the states’ rights and Assemblies. This initiative is going to face enormous opposition from diverse political quarters, including many so-called BJP allies, and also from many sections of civil society.

It is important to note that democracy is a festival of diversity, uncertainty, spontaneous will, and the mandate of people in different degrees, colours, and shades. This measure imposes artificial uniformity on that diversity and hits the root of our democratic fundamentals.

It seems that the earliest simultaneous Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections can be held in 2034…

What it (One Nation, One Election) will lead to is maybe a temporary artificial synchronisation, which too is highly unlikely before 2034. But it will all fall apart the moment the majorities in legislative Assemblies change. Furthermore, it does not take into account the very fickle loyalties of legislators and the complete mockery we have made of the anti-defection law in which, incidentally, the ruling party is the biggest culprit.

How they propose to deal with those shifting loyalties based upon the quicksand of politics while supposedly synchronising elections time and again, is a mystery which the BJP wants to remain unasked and unanswered.

The government has cited “expensive and time-consuming” polls as a reason for synchronising elections. The Bill says the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) puts development work on hold, disrupts normal life, affects services, and curtails government employees from carrying out their core duties as they get mobilised for election duty…

The supposed adverse monetary impact of multiple elections is highly exaggerated and inflated. The same number of elections will be held then as now; they are merely being synchronised. Elections also generate commercial activity, a particular set of service industries, taxes, trade, commerce and growth. No actual figure of saving has been propounded. The reach and extent of the electoral process spread over the country will be largely the same.

Moreover, much more monetary savings can be done, if that is the objective, by increasing EVM infrastructure and some personnel and curtailing the election duration to a maximum of three to four weeks and not the endless nine-week cycle we have just seen in 2024. The government and the Election Commission (EC) seem to be supremely uninterested in that.

It is true that the MCC will be less frequently invoked, but that cannot be a sufficient reason for violating the democratic will of the people.