Talk Of ‘One Nation, One Poll’ Through Back Door Means Modi May Be Mulling Early Polls By Year-End

The idea of holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies has been DOA (dead on arrival) for the simple reason that it has come from Narendra Modi. Almost no other party has dared to voice even conditional support to the idea of one nation, one poll (ONOP), though individual members of Parliament (MPs) have spoken about it – some positively, most negatively. No constitutional amendment to give effect to this proposal can ever pass when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition are at loggerheads over almost any issue.

An ingenious thought is now doing the rounds to achieve a partial roll-out of ONOP without actually tinkering with the Constitution. A report in The Economic Times today (13 April) – attributed to “sources” – says two parallel ideas are being explored. One, to impose President’s Rule in the states whose assemblies end their terms before the Lok Sabha polls and then hold them along with the latter. In this scenario, states whose assembly terms expire within six months after the Lok Sabha polls can be persuaded to call for early elections, especially since most of the states involved are BJP states. The other proposal is to bring Lok Sabha elections themselves forward to, say, November this year, and then hold a good chunk of assembly elections that are anyway due along with them.

Unfortunately, these shortcuts make no sense when one looks at them more closely.

First, how is the Modi government going to persuade opposition-ruled states (Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana), whose polls are usually held along with the Lok Sabha one, to sign on to Modi’s game plan of bringing the general election forward to November? If the idea is to bring forward the state elections due after May 2019 to match the timing of the Lok Sabha poll, will the BJP’s own state units in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand, whose tenures will end only towards the end of 2019, agree to curtail their governments? To do this, they have to believe that Modi will bring them back to power.

Second, while the states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh may be happy to see assemblies dissolved this year and face elections only in April-May next year under President’s rule, any such proposal will need the Parliament’s approval, and in the current state of political confrontation, the Rajya Sabha will certainly not back the change. Again, a dead end.

Third, trying to achieve the goal of ONOP without a constitutional amendment is pointless when the fundamental argument against it is this one: if a government loses the confidence of the assembly, it will again fall out of step with the national election time table. This can be remedied only if the Constitution is amended to allow for the state (or central) government to be reconstituted till polls can be held on the due dates. A halfway-house proposal in this regard is to hold elections twice in a cycle of five years, with half of the states doing it in round one and the other half in round two, with governments falling in between being substituted with a multi-party ministry (or some such formulae) till the election dates approach. The whole point of simultaneous elections is lost without addressing this issue, which can only be done through changes in the Constitution.

As such, the only remaining possibility is to bring forward the 2019 general election to later this year, so that the BJP can restrict the damage and hope to return to power – possibly with a smaller number of MPs, which means heading a coalition – by making Modi the selling point.

This is not an implausible scenario. Given the deteriorating narrative around BJP governments at the centre and states, one can see that only Modi can make the difference. What makes no sense is the idea of bypassing constitutional changes in order to achieve the one nation, one poll outcome. That ain’t happening.

Put another way, the government looks like it may be calling an early poll. It’s not about ONOP. Other signals point in the same direction, with the party doing a nationwide fast yesterday (12 April) to protest the opposition’s disruptive tactics in Parliament. The Prime Minister has also called on MPs to go back to their constituencies and explain the government’s pro-poor policies.

If an early election is planned, we will know better after the Karnataka poll results are out after mid-May. The earliest any decision will be announced will, however, be around October, for that’s when the plan to give Rs 5 lakh medical cover to 10 crore poor families will be launched. Modi needs something new to take to the masses.