One Nation, One Election
One Nation, One Election
(129 Amendment) Bill
- two-thirds majority in both Houses
- ratification by half the states.
chaired by former President Ram Nath Kovind, the government has committed to this push.
The HLC report rests on four pillars:
- Cost savings,
- relief from “policy paralysis” caused by the Model Code of Conduct,
- reduced burden on government manpower,
- and an economic growth dividend.
Its economic anchor is a striking claim: Research by Prachi Mishra, N K Singh and colleagues finds that real GDP growth will increase 1.5 percentage points following simultaneous election cycles. That single finding must be examined carefully.
simultaneous election era 1952–1967
The paper compares the simultaneous election era (1952–1967, partially until the mid-1980s)
The era produced what economists call the
- “Hindu rate of growth”:
- Around 3.5 per cent annually,
- decades of the licence raj,
- import substitution,
- and a closed economy.
Asynchronous elections—
commonly known as the staggered voting cycle—refer to a system where elections for different tiers of government (national, state, and local) occur at different times rather than simultaneously. This cycle frequently triggers the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct, which can delay policy decisions and halt developmental programs
The 8 to 9 per cent annual growth of 2003–2011 was achieved with staggered state polls running through every single year.
If simultaneous elections drive growth, this history is very difficult to explain. The macro confounders —
- trade liberalisation,
- the IT boom,
- global capital flows,
- financial deepening,
- and the 1991 reforms — are too large to control away.
More consequentially, the paper’s own results show the growth effect operating partly through
- higher fiscal deficits
- Structural improvement,
- or a political business cycle merely compressed in time?
- A constitutional overhaul cannot rest on correlations that India’s own history contradicts.
Who is actually spending?
spending is by candidates and parties
The government’s election expenditure is not even 0.1 per cent of its own budget, as ECI accounts confirm.
The “excessive” spending is by candidates and parties. But the telling detail is this: Per audited accounts submitted to the ECI, the average official expenditure by candidates is 50 per cent of the permissible ceiling.
Candidates are, on paper
underspending, not overspending. The implication is inescapable:
The real money is not in any account. It is black money
unaccounted and untraceable, which the Centre for Media Studies estimates at over Rs 1,00,000 crore for the 2024 Lok Sabha election alone.
not reduce election spending
No electoral calendar reform can touch this. The same
- political economy of cash,
- patronage / sarankshan and
- opacity prevails whether elections happen every year or once in five years.
- ONOE does not reduce election spending; it merely concentrates it.
On the Model Code of Conduct:
The MCC / Model Code of Conduct restricts government announcements for roughly 45 to 60 days per election.
Because India holds state elections in a rolling fashion, NITI Aayog estimates some part of the country is under the MCC for about four months every year.
single national freeze every five years
Under ONOE scheme , that rolling freeze becomes a single national freeze every five years, simultaneously halting development in every state.
The disruption is not eliminated; it is nationally concentrated and potentially more distorting. .
Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati
has held that parliamentary democracy and free and fair elections are part of the Constitution’s basic structure, a threshold even amendments cannot cross.
Three specific tensions arise.
First, parliamentary government rests on collective responsibility:
The executive holds office only so long as it commands legislative confidence.
Under ONOE, a government losing its majority would either
- continue without a legitimate mandate
- trigger President’s Rule — neither is acceptable.
The HLC’s proposed “constructive no-confidence motion”, requiring any no-confidence vote to be paired with a simultaneous confidence vote for an alternative, is borrowed from Germany and distorts India’s parliamentary tradition. As Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy researchers point out, it would incentivise minority governments to cling to office despite lacking popular support.
Second
reaching the first synchronised cycle requires extending or curtailing multiple state assembly terms.
Articles 83 and 172 deliberately use the words “no longer” — a phrase the Constituent Assembly inserted to bar extensions beyond five years.
Extending terms without fresh mandate breaches the voters’ contract; curtailing them denies voters the period they voted for. Either way, the electorate’s will is overridden.
Third
simultaneous elections structurally disadvantage regional parties, and the republic’s federal character. Research shows a consistent “wave effect” when national and state elections coincide.
Voters tend to choose the same party at both levels, giving large national parties a decisive advantage. Regional concerns such as agrarian distress in Vidarbha, coastal livelihoods in Kerala, or flood management in Assam, find parliamentary voice through regional formations. Bundling elections risks submerging these voices under national campaigns.
panchayat and urban local body elections
The ONOE framework also ignores elections to India’s constitutionally protected third tier of government. The 73rd and 74th Amendments placed panchayat and urban local body elections under State Election Commissions, not the ECI, guaranteeing their autonomy.
These are not minor contests. Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru have budgets larger than many Indian states, and their elections are high-stakes political battles. Folding them into ONOE would violate the spirit of these amendments; keeping them separate undermines ONOE’s own rationale.
Substantial expenditure, security deployment, and governance disruption would continue through every panchayat and municipal cycle, leaving the claimed savings largely illusory.
WHAT TO DO ?
- Unlimited party spending,
- cash distribution to voters,
- criminalisation of politics,
- and misuse of state machinery.
These require targeted reform:
Mandatory
- disclosure of all donations,
- enforceable expenditure limits,
- disbarment of criminally tainted candidates,
- and a genuinely autonomous ECI. All these reforms are achievable without touching the Constitution’s federal and parliamentary foundations.
The ONOE Bill reorganises the democratic calendar. It does not fix what is broken.
SOURCE IE
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