Roadmap for ‘One Nation, One Election’: If date 2029, 17 states to have Assemblies for less than 3 years

Shah had reiterated the BJP’s commitment towards simultaneous elections, which has been a manifesto promise of the party in the last three Lok Sabha polls.

Last year, the Modi government had appointed the Kovind committee to suggest ways to hold simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha, state Assemblies and municipalities. The committee submitted its report to President Droupadi Murmu in March this year ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, recommending various constitutional amendments.

The Kovind panel recommended simultaneous polls for the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.

This requires constitutional amendments but, as a first step, to hold the Lok Sabha and state elections together, a ratification by states will not be required for the amendments, once it is approved by Parliament.

In the second step, elections to the municipalities and panchayats will be synchronised with elections to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies in such a way that the local body elections are held within 100 days of the elections to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies. This will require ratification by not less than one-half of the states.

The BJP, which won 240 seats, relies on its allies including the TDP, Janata Dal (United), and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) for its majority. Questions have been raised about their support to the simultaneous elections plan but the BJP camp says that all these allies are on board and “arithmetic” would not get in the way of this “reform process”.

If simultaneous elections are to come into effect in 2029, the process has to start now. After the constitutional provisions on the duration of the Lok Sabha and Assemblies are amended by Parliament, many state Assemblies will have to be dissolved in 2029 much before the end of their five-year term to facilitate simultaneous elections.

While the Kovid panel has left it to the Centre to decide when it can be ready for simultaneous polls, this is the roadmap it has suggested. This one-time transition is going to be the inevitable result in the wake of the Modi Cabinet’s decision to accept the panel’s recommendations.

The 10 states that got new governments last year will hold elections again in 2028 and the new governments will be in power for about a year or less. These states are Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Karnataka, Telangana, Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Gujarat, even if they deliver clear majorities to a party, will have governments that last two years or less as they will next go to polls in 2027. Similarly, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, and Kerala will have governments that will last three years even in the event of a majority in the next Assembly polls as they are scheduled to go to polls in 2026. Only Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Haryana bound for polls this year — some simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls like Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, with the remaining ones later in the year — can have the same government for five years.

To make sure that simultaneous polls do not run afoul of the Constitution, the Kovind committee has recommended amendments to Article 83 that deals with the duration of the Lok Sabha, and Article 172 that deals with the duration of a state Assembly. This is likely to follow a Presidential notification. If the amendments fail to get parliamentary approval, the notification will become null and void. If the amendments are adopted, simultaneous polls will become a reality and the terms of most state governments will get truncated during the transition.

While offering details of the steps to be followed for simultaneous elections, the committee has left it to the government to decide when it is ready for it. “The Government would have to decide when the arrangements are in place for holding simultaneous elections,” says the report.

Once “One Nation, One Election” becomes a reality, say in 2029, if the Lok Sabha or a state Assembly gets dissolved before its term of five years because of a loss of majority on the floor of the House after the “appointed date”, the committee has proposed that fresh elections be held. These will be “midterm elections” and the new government will last only for the remainder of the full term, called “unexpired term”.

The transition to simultaneous polls may also disincentivise no-confidence motions as the Opposition parties will not see much merit in pulling down a government and going for fresh elections, given that the term of the next government will not be for a full five years.

Going by the numbers in the current Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, however, the Modi government is set to face stiff resistance from the Opposition parties in passing the constitutional amendments. The Opposition INDIA alliance has strongly opposed the proposed synchronised polls, raising concerns about the constitutional changes and its impact on federalism.