New Delhi:

Two bills to amend the Constitution – and allow simultaneous federal and state elections by 2034 – were sent to a 39-member joint parliamentary committee Friday morning, as the final act of a Lok Sabha winter session roiled by unseemly Congress vs BJP, protest vs counterprotest drama over Home Minister Amit Shah’s “Ambedkar is the fashion” remark. The Lower House was then adjourned sine die.

Congress MPs Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Manish Tewari and the Trinamool’s Kalyan Banerjee and Saket Gokhale are among the opposition faces on the committee, while former Union Minister Anurag Thakur, Sambit Patra, and Anil Baluni will represent the government.

Others on the panel – expanded from 31 after smaller parties also demanded representation – are from Maharashtra’s rival Shiv Sena and NCP factions and two of the BJP’s allies; the latter, though, doesn’t yet include either Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JDU or Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, both of which are seen as propping the BJP’s government at the centre.

READ | ‘1 Nation, 1 Poll’ Panel To Include Priyanka Gandhi, Anurag Thakur

The JPC will have an initial term of 90 days but this can be extended. It has been tasked with holding “wider consultations” on five contentious amendments to the Constitution, which include limiting and/or altering, and linking terms of state and union territory assemblies to the Lok Sabha.

Among those to be consulted is the Election Commission, the country’s top poll body and which will have the extraordinarily mammoth task of organising the simultaneous elections.

The Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha this week by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, and triggered fierce protests from the opposition.

READ | Congress’ “Two-Thirds Majority” Jab At BJP Over ‘One Nation, One Poll’

The Congress and two INDIA bloc allies – the Samajwadi Party and the Trinamool, neither of whom have seen eye-to-eye this Parliament session – united to condemn what they said were attempts to subvert the Constitution and the country’s federal character, by robbing legislatures of independence.

The proposed switch to simultaneous polls has, however, been backed by the ruling BJP, which has claimed streamlining the electoral calendar – which sees multiple state and local body polls every year – offers multiple economic benefits, including preventing ‘policy paralysis’ and lowering costs.

What Is ‘One Nation, One Election’?

Simply put, it means all Indians will vote in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections – to pick central and state representatives – in the same year, if not at the same time.

As of 2024, only four states voted with a Lok Sabha election – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Odisha voted alongside the April-June Lok Sabha election. Three others – Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jammu and Kashmir – voted in October-November.

NDTV Special | ‘One Nation, One Election’: What Is It And How Will It Work

The rest follow a non-synced five-year cycle; Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Telangana, for example, were among those voted at different times last year, while Delhi and Bihar will vote in 2025 and Tamil Nadu and Bengal are among those that will vote in 2026.

Can ‘One Nation, One Election’ Work?

Not without the amendments to the Constitution and that amendment being ratified by the governments of all states and union territories, as well as, possibly, major political parties.

These are Article 83 (term of Parliament), Article 85 (dissolution of Lok Sabha by the President), Article 172 (duration of state legislatures), and Article 174 (dissolution of state legislatures), as well as Article 356 (imposition of President’s Rule).

Legal experts have warned that failure to pass such amendments will leave the proposal open to attack on charges of violating India’s federal structure.

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The Joint Parliamentary Committee to review the One Nation One Election bill will have eight more members. Now it will have 27 members from Lok Sabha and 12 from Rajya Sabha, instead of 21 members from the lower house and 10 from the upper house, as was initially declared. The number has been increased after former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena UBT leader Uddhav Thackeray and a few other parties pointed out that none of their members have been included in the committee. 

Even so, the Committee – which the government wants to include all political parties — still does not include members from the Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United and Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party. The Rajya Sabha members, however, are yet to be named. One member from Shiv Sena UBT has been included now. 

The committee can have a maximum of 31 MPs based on each party’s Lok Sabha numbers. This favours the ruling BJP – the largest party in the Lower House with 240 MPs. The Congress has 99 MPs.

The new members include Anil Desai ( Shivsena UBT ) Chhotelal (BJP), Vaijayant Panda (BJP), Shambhavi Chaudhary (LJP Ram Vilas), Sanjay Jaiswal (BJP) and K Radhakrishnan (CPM).

The Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha earlier this week. The bill will pave the way for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha, state assembles and local bodies with minimum gap. 

But its implementation will require a series of amendments to the Constitution that can only be done with two-thirds majority in parliament. Some provisions may have to be ratified by the governments of states and Union Territories.

Given the huge changes this will involve, the government plans to start a dialogue that will involve all stakeholders and get everyone on board.

The Opposition has already been voicing its objections, with most parties contending that the bill will subvert the Constitution – an allegation the government has repeatedly refuted.

Introduced on Tuesday by Law Minister Arjun Meghwal in the Lok Sabha, the One Nation One Election Bill has sparked hours of bitter arguments which is still having ripple effects. The absence of a few BJP members from the house despite a party whip enthused the Opposition into claiming that bill had critics even within the ruling party.

Legal experts have warned that failure to pass the amendments will leave the government open to allegations that it is distorting India’s federal structure. Many Opposition parties have already claimed the Centre is robbing the states of the right to self-determination, besides violating the Constitution.

While introducing the bill, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said, “Laws can be brought in for electoral reforms… this bill is aligned with the process of easing the electoral process, which will be synchronised. There will be no damage to the Constitution via this Bill. There will be no tampering with the basic structure of the Constitution”.
 

New Delhi:

The Lok Sabha on Tuesday held a division vote to introduce two bills to amend the Constitution and permit simultaneous federal and state polls, as part of the ruling BJP’s ‘one nation, one election’ push.

The bills were passed by simple majority, as required by the rulebook; 269 MPs voted in favour and 198 opposed it. However, the margin was flagged by critics of the ‘one nation, one election’ bill, who claimed it shows the government lacks support, even at this stage, to pass the bills.

“Two-thirds majority (i.e., 307) was needed out of the total 461 votes… but the government secured only (269), while the opposition got 198. The ‘One Nation, One Election’ proposal failed to gain two-thirds support,” Congress MP Manickam Tagore said on X, with a screenshot of the e-voting system.

Two-thirds majority (307) was needed out of the total 461 votes, but the government secured only 263, while the opposition got 198. The ‘One Nation, One Election’ proposal failed to gain two-thirds support. pic.twitter.com/5GIQQ0qY7r

— Manickam Tagore .Bமாணிக்கம் தாகூர்.ப (@manickamtagore) December 17, 2024

Mr Tagore’s colleague, Shashi Tharoor, also pointed out the apparent gap in numbers.

“Undoubtedly the government has larger numbers on its side… but to pass it (bills to amend the Constitution) you need a 2/3 majority that they very clearly don’t have,” he told reporters after the House was briefly adjourned, “It is obvious (then) that they should not persist too long with this…”

#WATCH | On One Nation One Election Bill, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says “…Undoubtedly the government has larger numbers on its side than us. In the JPC, however, they may even have a majority in terms of the composition of the JPC but to pass it as a constitutional amendment,… pic.twitter.com/8e56JJNNCP

— ANI (@ANI) December 17, 2024

According to the rules, these amendments to the Constitution will require the support of two-third of members present and voting to clear the Lok Sabha. The Congress, using today as an example, pointed out that 461 members took part in the vote to introduce the Constitutional Amendment Bill.

If this were a vote to pass the bill, 307 of those 461 would have to vote in favour but only 269 did, prompting the Congress to say, “This bill does not have support… many parties have spoken against it.”

The Congress’ exultations, while premature, contain a kernel of truth.

‘One Nation, One Election’ Numbers Game

As of today the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has 293 MPs in its camp, and the opposition – the Congress-led INDIA – has 234. Even at full strength the NDA’s score is not enough – as the Congress leaders said – to push through bills to amend the Constitution.

The BJP will, therefore, need support, from non-aligned parties, but there are only two possibilities here – the YSR Congress with four MPs and the Akali Dal with one. Both have already pledged support. 

That leaves Prime Minister Narendra Modi needing at least nine more votes – not impossible to cobble together for the BJP – for his ‘one nation, one election’ dream to cross the Lok Sabha.

For now, the bill will likely be sent to a joint committee that will be constituted based on each party’s Lok Sabha numbers. This will mean the BJP will have the maximum members and lead the committee

Congress, Opposition Slam ONOP

The Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha this afternoon by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal. The introduction was followed by scathing attacks from the opposition.

The Congress’ Manish Tewari, the Samajwadi Party’s Dharmendra Yadav, Kalyan Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, and TR Baalu from Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam led the charge.

The Shiv Sena faction of ex-Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and the Nationalist Congress Party group led by Sharad Pawar, as well as a host of smaller parties, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Indian Union Muslim League, also voiced opposition.

READ | “Not Tampering With State Powers”: Law Minister On ‘ONOP’

The common thread among critics of the ‘One Nation, One Poll’, or ONOP Bill, was that the simultaneous elections proposal subverts the basic structure of the Constitution and must be withdrawn immediately. Mr Yadav, meanwhile, warned the House, “This is the path to dictatorship”.

Earlier, Trinamool boss and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called it “a design to subvert the basic structure of the Constitution and slammed the “anti-federal” exercise, labelling it “an authoritarian imposition designed to undermine India’s democracy and federal structure”.

READ | “Must Save Democracy”: Mamata Banerjee, Opposition Slam ‘1 Nation, 1 Poll’

Mr Baalu flagged the expenditure simultaneous polls entailed, including the Election Commission having to spend Rs 10,000 crore on new EVMs, or electronic voting machines, every 15 years. “The government should send this bill to the JPC (joint parliamentary committee),” he said.

READ | Rs 10,000 Crore Every 15 Years – Cost Of ‘One Nation, One Poll’

“Unwavering Support” From BJP Allies

Two of the BJP’s allies – Andhra Pradesh’s ruling Telugu Desam Party and the Sena faction of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde – established their backing of the bill.

“We have seen in Andhra Pradesh (that) when simultaneous elections happen… there is clarity of process and governance. That has been our experience and we want that to happen across the country,” the TDP’s Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu said, expressing “unwavering support”.

BJP Responds

Rising to speak after the avalanche of criticism, Mr Meghwal hit back and insisted the ‘one nation, one election’ proposal is a long-pending piece of electoral reform and will not damage the Constitution.

“Laws can be brought in for electoral reforms… this bill is aligned with the process of easing the electoral process, which will be synchronised. There will be no damage to the Constitution via this Bill. There will be no tampering with the basic structure of the Constitution,” he said.

What Is ‘One Nation, One Election’?

Simply put, it means all Indians will vote in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections – to pick central and state representatives – in the same year, if not at the same time.

As of 2024, only four states voted with a Lok Sabha election – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Odisha voted alongside the April-June Lok Sabha election. Three others – Maharashtra, Haryana, and Jammu and Kashmir – voted in October-November.

NDTV Special | ‘One Nation, One Election’: What Is It And How Will It Work

The rest follow a non-synced five-year cycle; Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Telangana, for example, were among those voted at different times last year, while Delhi and Bihar will vote in 2025 and Tamil Nadu and Bengal are among those that will vote in 2026.

Can ‘One Nation, One Election’ Work?

Not without an amendment to the Constitution and that amendment being ratified by the governments of all states and union territories, as well as, possibly, major political parties.

NDTV Explains | ‘One Nation, One Election’. What Are Pros And Cons?

These are Article 83 (term of Parliament), Article 85 (dissolution of Lok Sabha by the President), Article 172 (duration of state legislatures), and Article 174 (dissolution of state legislatures), as well as Article 356 (imposition of President’s Rule).

Legal experts have warned that failure to pass such amendments will leave the proposal open to attack on charges of violating India’s federal structure.

NDTV is now available on WhatsApp channels. Click on the link to get all the latest updates from NDTV on your chat.

New Delhi:

India aims to move to a system of holding a singular, unified, gargantuan election in which citizens elect both the Central government and respective state (federal) governments.

This will not be the first time India attempts this system of election. When the country earned its Independence in 1947, the founding fathers had planned for this very model of election – simultaneous parliamentary and state assembly polls. From the very first election held in the country – in 1952 – this was the way India voted.

But all that changed in 1967 – when India voted for the last time under the ‘One Nation, One Election’ format. At the time, all of India voted in a single phase, except for Uttar Pradesh (formerly United Provinces), which voted in four phases. Polling was conducted between the 15th and 21st of February that year. This was India’s fourth such election and polling was carried out to elect MPs and MLAs to 520 Lok Sabha seats and 3,563 Assembly constituencies.

Then the era of coalition politics peaked, and ultimately led to the end of simultaneous elections in the country. Till 1967, the Congress was the only party which governed India, but by then it was facing several challenges and setbacks. India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had died a few year ago, his daughter, Indira Gandhi was facing pressure from key allies; the Congress was facing large-scale anti-incumbency as well as struggling with an internal power tussle, and to top it all, India had lost the 1962 war against China.

Six decades hence, India now looks to resume the ‘One Nation, One Election’. The Union Cabinet led by the Prime Minister has cleared the proposal and approved the bills to implement it. It will now likely be tabled in Parliament in the ongoing Winter Session, with an aim to be passed Constitutionally for it to become the norm.

OTHER NATIONS WITH SIMULTANEOUS ELECTIONS

Before this stage was reached, a high-level panel had been formed. It was led by former President Ram Nath Kovind. The panel not just studied how India carried out such elections in the past and what the loopholes were at the time, but also carried out extensive research on how such elections are carried out across the world.

During its global research, the panel focused on seven countries – South Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Indonesia, The Philippines, and Japan – all of which carry out simultaneous elections and have been doing so successfully. The panel then submitted its findings and a proposed working model to the President of India, Droupadi Murmu earlier this year.

In its report, the panel stated that a detailed comparative analysis of countries with similar electoral processes was studied to understand their workings of conducting simultaneous elections. The aim of understanding multiple models from different nations carrying out unified, simultaneous polls was to learn and adopt the best international practices and to ensure fairness and transparency in the electoral process.

“In South Africa, voters cast their ballots for both the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures simultaneously. However, municipal elections are held separately from provincial ones in a five-year cycle,” the report stated.

Sweden, the panel stated, functions on a proportional electoral system. This means that the number of seats a political party is assigned in the elected assembly is based on its share of votes in the election. “They have a system where elections for the Parliament (Riksdag), County Councils, and Municipal Councils all take place at the same time. These elections occur every four years on the second Sunday of September whereas elections to the municipal assemblies occur on the second Sunday of September, once every five years,” it stated.

The panel also studied the German model of electioneering. In its report is stated that in Germany, there is a constructive vote of no-confidence in addition to the procedure for the appointment of a Chancellor made by the Bundestag (Germany’s Lower House of Parliament). It is a variation on the motion of no confidence that allows a parliament to withdraw confidence from a head of government only if there is a positive majority for a prospective successor.

In Japan, the Prime Minister is firstly appointed by the National Diet and thereafter accepted by the Emperor. According to the report, a key member in the high-level panel had suggested that India should “adopt a model similar to that in Germany and Japan”.

Like India, Indonesia also switched to the ‘One Nation, One Election’ format only recently – in 2019. The President, Vice-President, and members of both national and regional legislative bodies are elected on the same day. According to the report by the high-level panel “Political parties need 4 per cent of votes to qualify for the National Parliament. A Presidential candidate needs more than 50 per cent of votes cast overall and at least 20 per cent of votes in more than half the country’s provinces to win.”

The report also noted that “On February 14, 2024, Indonesia successfully conducted simultaneous elections. It was termed as the world’s largest single day elections since nearly 200 million people voted across all five levels – President, Vice-President, Members of Parliament, Members of Regional Assemblies and Municipal elections.”

India, a country of more than 1.4 billion (1,400 million / 140 crore) people, now aims to create the world record by conducting the largest-ever simultaneous elections. Whether that will happen in 2029 is not certain yet. It will first have to pass the test in Parliament.
 

New Delhi:

The leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has declined to be part of the eight-member committee headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind to see whether India could hold parliamentary and state assembly elections simultaneously.

In a letter to Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also part of the committee, Mr Chowdhury pointed out that Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge “has been excluded” from the committee, and instead they took former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad.

“This is a deliberate insult to the system of parliamentary democracy,” Mr Chowdhury said in the letter.

The other members of the committee are former 15th Finance Commission chairman NK Singh, former Lok Sabha Secretary General  Subhash C Kashyap, senior advocate Harish Salve, and former Chief Vigilance Commissioner Sanjay Kothari.

The committee will look into the feasibility of holding not only Lok Sabha and assembly elections simultaneously, but also elections to municipalities and panchayats, according to the gazette notification.

“I have no hesitation whatsoever in declining to serve on the committee whose terms of reference have been prepared in a manner to guarantee its conclusions. It is, I am afraid, a total eyewash. Moreover, the sudden attempt to thrust a constitutionally suspect, pragmatically non-feasible and logistically unimplementable idea on the nation, months before the general elections, raises serious concerns about ulterior motives of the government,” the Congress leader said in the letter.

“Furthermore, I find that the current LOP in the Rajya Sabha has been excluded. This is a deliberate insult to the system of parliamentary democracy. In these circumstances, I have no option but to decline your invitation,” Mr Chowdhury said.

The nine-member committee will check whether the amendments to the Constitution would need ratification by the states, according to the government’s gazette notification today.

The committee will analyse and recommend possible solutions linked to simultaneous elections if there is a hung house, no-confidence motion, defection, or any such other event.

A single electoral roll and identity card for voters valid for the national, state, civic body and panchayat elections will be explored, the government said in the notification.

The BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have spoken on the need for ‘One Nation, One Election’ on several occasions, and it was also a part of the party’s manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.