In a democracy as diverse as India, the sooner the ONOE is given up for dead, the better. It goes against the founding vision of this nation — of a parliamentary and federal system, not one that is presidential and unitary.
That the Union cabinet would clear the plan for One Nation One Election (ONOE), having accepted the Ram Nath Kovind committee report’s unanimous recommendation, was foretold. Looking back, it has been on the cards ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi advocated ONOE in his I-Day speech from the ramparts of Red Fort this August 15. But the ring of grim inevitability gathered by this contentious proposal that presumes to rearrange the country’s electoral and federal systems goes back further — to the constitution of the Kovind Committee in September 2023. Its composition and terms of reference were so skewed that, with due respect to the former President, it was a rubber stamp in the thin garb of a committee discussing electoral reforms in the world’s most populous democracy. Its eight members had either openly expressed their support for simultaneous polls or were seen to be broadly in tune with the government and its favoured projects. The stated mandate of the committee was to find ways to implement a proposal certified as being in “national interest”, not to ask why. Despite the serious implications of ONOE for the federal system, and in spite of it raising concerns about the national dominating the local, no regional party leader, no chief minister, was taken on board. At that time, therefore, when the then Congress leader in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, refused the invitation to be part of the committee, it seemed to be an abdication of responsibility to place the Opposition’s concerns on the table. But, at the same time, Chowdhury was right to call it out as a “total eyewash” and to point out that its very terms of reference guaranteed its conclusion.
Now that the committee has done what it set out to do — arguing from the conclusion back to the premise — and the Cabinet has put its stamp on it, the Opposition, in a stronger position after the general election verdict, must not miss the opportunity that is still available to it. The ONOE proposal requires a special majority in Parliament and, in its second phase, also the ratification of state legislatures. This proposal must not be allowed to go through. Because it makes the will of the people and their representatives subservient to a fixed calendar imposed in the name of cutting costs and increasing administrative convenience, specious arguments that don’t stand any rigorous test of evidence. The project reeks of a straitjacket approach that sees elections as an interruption in “good governance”, not as what they really are — an expression of people’s will that is full-bodied and dynamic and that must be recognised and respected as such for there to be responsive governance.
In a democracy as diverse as India, the sooner the ONOE is given up for dead, the better. It goes against the founding vision of this nation — of a parliamentary and federal system, not one that is presidential and unitary. In a federal structure, each state has unique contestations within and with the Centre; the Lok Sabha is the citizen’s voice at the Centre. To frame these complexities in terms of cost-cutting and convenience is doing disservice to the Constitution’s spirit. Quite simply, elections must be held whenever and wherever governments lose the trust of the people as embodied and expressed by their representatives. That’s a constitutional guarantee without any qualifications. Imposing a calendar and defining limits for the House, undermines the will of we, the people.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 21-09-2024 at 01:00 IST
