One Nation, One Election: A warranted reform for Bharat's electoral process

The process will face certain challenges in initial adoption. Still, the necessity outweighs the potential difficulties that Indian democracy would face in the coming decades.

- SANTISHREE DHULIPUDI PANDIT

Last week, the Union Cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi accepted the recommendation of the Kovind Committee on One Nation, One Election (ONOE). The high-level committee was formed in 2023 and headed by former President of India Ramnath Kovind to look into the viability and feasibility of holding the Union, State, and Local elections within a single time frame. It submitted its gigantic 18,000-page report to President Draupadi Murmu in March earlier this year.

In a vast and diverse country like India, which has 28 states and 8 union territories, the electoral process is so expansive that each year, on an average, more than five elections occur, naturally making the concept of the ONOE commonsensical to adopt.

However, the politicization of the concept and partisan politics have rendered a charged atmosphere where common-sense decisions are more challenging to adopt, let alone implement. Debates and discussions are underway on ONOE, and what is most necessary at this stage is to take stock of things and perceive the ONOE rationally and without partisan politics.

NOT A NEW IDEA A score of political and socalled intellectual opposition to the idea is rooted in the fundamental disposition that the ONOE is not commensurate with Indian political practices. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Such analyses fail miserably because of their vast historical and political ignorance.

This was the default electoral process after Indian independence, where Union and State elections were held simultaneously in 195152, 1957, 1962, and 1967. The dissolving of various state assemblies afterward broke the synchronicity. However, the idea of the ONOE remained in veritable demand throughout the 1980s and 1990s.