New Delhi: All four former chief election commissioners (CECs) who approved the idea of ‘one nation, one election’ have faced questions of independence during their tenures.
The high-level committee led by former President Ram Nath Kovind on ‘one nation, one election’, whose report was approved by the Union cabinet last week, consulted four CECs and eight state election commissioners (SECs) before recommending that simultaneous elections could be implemented across the country. All but one SEC approved of the idea of simultaneous elections.
Tamil Nadu SEC V. Palanikumar cited the “pervasive dominance of national issues over local considerations” and the “efficacy of local governance” as reasons for disapproving the idea, according to the panel’s report.
However others concurred with the Union government’s advocacy of ‘one nation, one election’.
The four former CECs who were consulted include – Achal Kumar Joti (July 2017-January 2018), O.P. Rawat (January-December 2018), Sunil Arora (December 2018-April 2021) and Sushil Chandra (April 2021-May 2022).
All four served during the Modi government years and all supported the idea of ‘one nation, one election’.
Controversial tenures of four CECs consulted by Kovind panel
All four former CECs consulted by the committee had faced questions of independence during their respective tenures.
Joti came under criticism from opposition parties during his six-month tenure as CEC after the Election Commission (EC)’s decision to defer the Gujarat polls in 2017 instead of conducting them along with those in Himachal Pradesh. The opposition Congress had then accused the poll body of delaying the Gujarat assembly polls to suit the BJP.
Just days before his term ended in January 2018, the EC under Joti recommended to the president the disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs of the Delhi Assembly, finding them guilty of holding an alleged office of profit.
Rawat’s time in the EC was also not free of controversy. In 2017, as election commissioner, Rawat recused himself from hearing all cases and complaints related to the AAP after then-Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal questioned his impartiality and claimed his proximity to BJP leaders including then-Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, when the poll body was examining cases relating to the disqualification of AAP MLAs in alleged office of profit violations.
Later as CEC, he returned for the oral hearings of the cases after the Delhi high court set aside the disqualification of the MLAs.
It was during CEC Arora’s tenure that the EC saw internal discord during the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign after former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa’s demand that dissent notes be recorded in the commission’s orders on model code violations was rejected with a majority vote.
Lavasa became the only member of the three-member EC to rule that Modi had violated the model code of conduct while campaigning for the 2019 general election. He had also written to Arora in May 2019 that he felt forced to stay away from the meetings of the full commission as minority decisions were not being recorded.
The following year, Lavasa resigned, just months short of becoming CEC.
Chandra’s tenure as CEC was under the spotlight when in December 2021, the Indian Express reported that he along with the two election commissioners, Rajiv Kumar (now CEC) and Anup Chandra Pandey, despite his expressing reservations joined an online “interaction” called by the Prime Minister’s Office on November 16 that year, raising questions of propriety.
Later, the Union government clarified that the interaction with the CEC and the election commissioners was only an “informal” one.
What the four former CECs said to committee
The high-level committee’s report on simultaneous elections stated that Joti had supported the exercise, but did not provide any further details, simply stating that he had given his “positive response”.
According to the Kovind panel report, former CEC Rawat, who succeeded Joti to the post, also endorsed simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies but cautioned against including local body elections due to logistical challenges and potential resistance from states, “emphasising the need for review after a few years”.
In addition, he highlighted concerns including the insufficient availability of EVMs, resistance from states, increased violence in local body elections and differing delimitation practices. He suggested staggering elections to optimise resource deployment.
Rawat’s successor Arora also supported the idea of ‘one nation, one election’, the Kovind panel report stated. Arora endorsed the exercise and said that “historical precedent, constitutional principles and the need for efficiency” support the idea of simultaneous elections.
He advocated for empowering the EC for implementing the policy and suggested a committee headed by the CEC or a former one, supported by relevant government officials, to oversee its execution.
Former CEC Chandra (who succeeded Arora), the Kovind panel report said, expressed “strong support” for holding simultaneous elections and made several recommendations for synchronising all three elections.
His recommendations included abolishing the state election commission and empowering the EC for panchayat elections alongside unifying the National Electoral Roll through Aadhaar linkage. He also proposed extending the tenures of state assemblies and consolidating by-elections within a year, introducing a constructive vote of no-confidence and establishing EVM warehouses at state and district levels for election management efficiency.
Seven SECs’ support
The committee report stated that it had during its meetings consulted eight present and former SECs: Sanjay Prasad (Gujarat), B. Basavaraaju (Karnataka), U.P.S. Madan (Maharashtra), V. Palanikumar (Tamil Nadu), Madhukar Gupta (Rajasthan), Anil Kumar Khachi (Himachal Pradesh), Sanjay Srivastava (Delhi, Chandigarh) and Dalip Singh (Haryana).
All except Palanikumar supported the conduct of ‘one nation, one election’, with the committee report stating that this highlighted “a significant level of endorsement for this initiative”.
Prasad, while supporting the exercise, highlighted issues including delimitation concerns, the need for a common electoral roll and logistical challenges and also emphasised the strain on human resources especially regarding the deployment of EVMs and security personnel.
Basavaraaju while supporting the exercise proposed solutions for the conduct of simultaneous polls including the removal of the taluk panchayat tier, delimitation reforms, the adoption of OBC reservation and a single electoral roll along with revising panchayat constituency population thresholds.
Madan too advocated for a single electoral roll, a unified electoral law, conducting a census before any changes in ward allocations and using ballot boxes in rural areas until sufficient EVMs were available. He also suggested abolishing the post of SEC in favour of regional commissioners.
Gupta on the other hand suggested empowering SECs to function as chief electoral officers for Lok Sabha and state assembly elections. But he also cautioned against the potential introduction of party politics at the village level if local body elections were held.
Khachi in his submissions to the committee said that disparities in voting methods between panchayat and national/state elections posed logistical challenges that could cause voter confusion. He also pointed to discrepancies in election phases and suggested that simultaneous elections could necessitate re-evaluation, impacting manpower and logistics.
While both Srivastava and Singh said to the committee that while logistical readjustments were needed, they outlined additional arrangements including increased polling booths, reduced voters per booth and the simultaneous declaration of election results to prevent voter influence and recommended that state election commissions continue to oversee local body elections.
The lone dissenting view
The only election commissioner consulted by the committee who disapproved of the idea was Palanikumar, who is Tamil Nadu’s SEC.
One primary concern was the pervasive dominance of national issues over local considerations during elections. The commissioner “expressed apprehension that this trend could potentially dilute the focus on region-specific challenges and diminish the efficacy of local governance,” the report said.
“Furthermore the commissioner highlighted the acute issue of a shortage in electoral manpower, emphasising the imperative of bolstering staff to ensure the seamless and efficient execution of elections.”
He also raised the need for the periodic delimitation of local wards every ten years “as the existing demarcations were deemed outdated”.
‘Widespread support’
While announcing the cabinet’s decision to approve the Kovind panel report, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated that the high-level committee had received widespread support for simultaneous elections.
Vaishnaw said that the panel had “extensively consulted a broad spectrum of stakeholders including political parties, judges, constitutional experts and a large number of experts from various fields.
“After extensive consultations with them a report was submitted, and it received extensive feedback that there is … widespread support for simultaneous elections in the country.”
A former CEC who did not wish to be named said to The Wire that the committee drew its inference after taking views from only one segment of election commissioners.
“You have taken one segment of election commissioners and drawn your inference on that. In an election matter, if you are so selective even with regard to consultation with people who have held the office of election commissioners, what kind of consultation would you have held?”
While the BJP has been pushing for ‘one nation, one election’ for a while, and most recently by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech, the exercise has faced criticism from opposition parties, who have said that it will undermine federalism.
Of the 47 parties consulted by the Kovind committee, 15 opposed the idea.
While no timeline has been given for the rollout of simultaneous polls, announcing the cabinet’s approval, Vaishnaw said that an implementation group will be formed and consensus be built in the coming days.
Writing in the Indian Express earlier this month, former CEC S.Y. Quraishi said that the mandate of the Kovind committee was “not to debate the pros and cons of the proposal, but to suggest concrete ways to implement it”.
Raising questions on the proposal to conduct panchayat elections within 100 days of Lok Sabha and state assembly elections, and the increased requirements of election material like EVMs, VVPATs and personnel among others that would increase costs, Quraishi also questioned the sincerity of the proposal along with the need to have the committee headed by former President Kovind.
“If the proposal was sincere, why have all the elections been prolonged in the last 10 years? Why have Himachal and Gujarat elections, which were always held simultaneously, been repeatedly segregated and why have the pending elections not been clubbed, as was always the practice?
“It puts a question mark on the sincerity of the proposal put forward in the name of national interest. The next logical demand could be, why not one nation one political party, or one nation one leader,” he wrote.
