Frequent elections ensure participation and vibrancy of India’s democracy

While the government evokes cost and governance effectiveness to support the idea of simultaneous elections, the opposition focuses on this project’s legal and political implications. The legal argument consists in observing that imposing and maintaining synchronicity of elections cannot be done without violating numerous constitutional provisions and the Representation of the People Act of 1951. This view is consistent with the 2018 draft report of the Law Commission. The Kovind report addresses these legal obstacles by listing the changes to the law that the reform would require, including 18 constitutional amendments.

However, addressing the legal questions that simultaneous elections raise cannot be reduced to a set of technical questions. The issues at stake are fundamentally political and affect the core of India’s democratic functioning. The idea of fixed tenure of elected assemblies, for example, is not merely a practical rule. It derives from the fundamental democratic principle that the term of an elected assembly ought to be determined by voters and not by the central government. Imposing synchronicity would require prematurely terminating elected state governments. Doing it as a ‘one-time temporary measure’ could set a dangerous precedent. Maintaining synchronicity subsequently would require an extension of the scope of the President’s rule, an instrument meant to address severe dereliction of a state government or severe breakdowns of law and order.

Amendments can address such hurdles, but making something legal does not necessarily mean making it democratic. President’s Rule, for instance, wasn’t conceived as an instrument to regulate the electoral calendar, and expanding its scope would open the way to new forms of arbitrary abuse of power by the Centre.

Re-synchronising Indian elections is an extraordinarily complex project that, in its current argumentation, suffers from three fatal flaws. The first is that by making cost-effectiveness and good governance the purpose of the reform, the government places democratic procedure and development in relation to opposition. India’s administrative woes are many, but they do not primarily derive from the frequency of elections or from any other ‘excess of democracy.’

Second, this project succumbs to the temptation of seeking magic wands instead of pursuing meaningful, targeted policy interventions. The cost of elections needs to be addressed by political financing reform and by reducing the number of phases of elections. Holding all elections at once would, on the other hand, raise the stakes for political parties, intensifying further the current financial arm’s race. The truly shocking aspect of election cost is the money that parties spend, not the cost of conducting the election itself.

Third, the cost and development arguments elude the fact that this reform, like all reforms preceded by the moniker ‘One Nation,’ aims at further centralising and concentrating powers. In a simultaneous election regime, campaigns would have essentially national overtones. National personality contests would take precedence over regional issues. Local elections would become even more partisan.

Simultaneous elections would also decrease government accountability. Frequent elections keep a government on its toes. They allow voters to express their views between national elections, providing a chance at course correction. They also provide opportunities to concentrate on issues that matter most to voters. For decades now, participation in state elections has been higher than in national elections, testimony of the people’s enthusiasm for elections.

Finally, the context of major political announcements is never coincidental. The proposal to concentrate the electoral calendar comes at a time when the BJP finds itself more and more challenged by state-based parties, not just in state elections but also in national ones. It would be hypocritical to deny that the BJP seeks to draw an electoral advantage from nationalising state elections.

A functioning democratic federation allocates resources and powers where they are the most effective. It also ensures that power gets invested in multiple people and that voters ultimately determine the fate of their elected government, preferably by voicing their views more than once every five years. Frequent elections ensure participation and vibrancy of India’s democracy. Political centralisation, on the other hand, has undermined it.

Gilles Verniers is Karl Loewenstein Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at Amherst College. The views expressed are personal.