New Delhi: A day after the lone Congress member on the ‘One Nation, One Election’ committee, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, declined to join the 8-member panel, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge characterised the move as “a subterfuge for dismantling the federal structure of India”.
Taking to social media platform X Sunday, Kharge alleged that the Modi government wants “democratic India” to slowly turn into a “dictatorship”, adding that the idea of ‘One Nation, One Election’ has been examined and rejected by three committees in the past.
Questioning the of a representative of the Election Commission on the newly formed panel, he wrote, “It remains to be seen whether the fourth (committee) one has been constituted with a pre-decided outcome in mind.”
Even as the Congress questioned the exclusion of Kharge from the committee in his capacity as the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, the party president emphasised that the proposed reform would require multiple constitutional amendments and a “massive” change in the Representation of the People Act, 19151.
“The Constitutional amendments shall be required to truncate the terms of the elected Lok Sabha and the legislative assemblies, as also at the level of local bodies, so that they can be synchronised,” he wrote.
To the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) argument that simultaneous polls, as suggested by the ‘One Nation, One Election’ theory, would save money, Kharge said, “The fact that the cost incurred by Election Commission in conducting all elections between 2014-19 (including Lok Sabha 2019) is around ₹5,500 crore, which is only a fraction of government’s budget expenditure, makes the cost saving logic like penny wise, pound foolish.”
PM Modi himself has earlier argued that implementation of the model code of conduct (MCC) at different times hampers development work. In response, Kharge said that the MCC can be changed either by “shortening the length of the moratorium or by relaxing the kinds of developmental activities permitted during the election season”.
To those claiming that simultaneous elections were held until 1967 and thus, shouldn’t be an issue now, Kharge said, “Till 1967, we neither had so many states nor did we have 30.45 lakh elected representatives in our panchayats,” adding, “India is the world’s largest democracy. We have lakhs of elected representatives, and their future cannot be determined at one go, now.”
The Rajya Sabha MP also attacked the ruling BJP for allegedly forcing multiple by-elections in the last nine years. “The BJP has a habit of overthrowing elected governments by disregarding the mandate of the people…This inherent greed for power in the BJP has already vitiated our politics and has rendered the anti-defection law, toothless.”
Kharge added, “For 2024, people of India only have ONE NATION, ONE SOLUTION — To get rid of BJP misrule.”
“Drastic actions like ‘One Nation, One Election’ would sabotage our democracy, Constitution and evolved-time-tested procedures. What can be accomplished by simple electoral reforms would prove to be a disaster, like other disruptive ideas of PM Modi,” he said.
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Three questions
In his post, the Congress president raised three “essential” questions about the ‘One Nation, One Election’ reform.
Questioning the committee itself, Kharge asked, “Is the proposed committee best suited to deliberate and decide on perhaps the most drastic disruption in the Indian electoral process?”
He also asked if it was appropriate to undertake this huge exercise “unilaterally” without consulting the political parties at the national and the state level.
The third question from the Congress president was if this “humongous operation (should) happen without bringing states and their elected governments on board”.
On Saturday, the Union law ministry notified the eight-member high level committee headed by former president Ram Nath Kovind to examine the feasibility of ‘One Nation, One Election’.
The committee members were Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, former chief minister of J&K Ghulam Nabi Azad, former chairman of the finance commission N.K. Singh, former secretary general of the Lok Sabha and constitutional expert Subhash C. Kashyap, senior advocate Harish Salve, and former chief vigilance commissioner Sanjay Kothari. However, Chowdhury later declined the invitation, calling the committee “a total eyewash“.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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