The Opposition on Wednesday criticised the government’s acceptance of the Kovind committee report on “one nation, one election”, calling it another headline-grabbing manoeuvre by the Narendra Modi administration.
Some likened it to the Women’s Reservation Bill, which was introduced with great fanfare but has yet to be implemented a year later.
The Opposition contended that the third Modi government does not have the numbers in Parliament to see through the constitutional amendments required to operationalise the Parliament-to-panchayat parallel polls, making this another jumla (gimmick).
The Kovind panel had written to 62 parties, of which 47 responded. Thirty-two supported the move and 15 opposed. There has been some realignment since and the BJP’s numbers have also come down in the Lok Sabha.
As it is opposed to the idea of simultaneous elections for Parliament and Assemblies fearing it to be another effort at centralising power, the Trinamool Congress and the AAP questioned how this was even doable when the Election Commission could not manage to conduct the elections in Maharashtra along with the ongoing polls in Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana.
Opposing the “hare-brained scheme”, the Congress shared party president Mallikarjun Kharge’s letter to the Kovind committee in January contesting the pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Nothing has changed, as far as the Congress is concerned, AICC communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh said, sharing the letter on X in response to Wednesday’s announcement.
The Congress had contested the government’s claim that simultaneous polls would cut down expenses, pointing out that the cost of the general election was only 0.02 per cent of the budget of the previous five years. Also, states pick up their tabs for their respective polls. Billing it anti-federal and against the basic structure of the Constitution, the Congress had urged the government to abandon the plan to sustain a robust democracy.
Trinamool leader Derek O’Brien said it was “just another cheap stunt from the anti-democratic BJP”, adding “you can’t do three states in one go and you talk about one nation, one election”. He also shared Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s letter to the Kovind panel in which she had articulated her party’s “suspicion” that the intent of parallel polls is to “subvert the basic structure” of the Constitution to facilitate “democratic grab” by the “autocracy”.
Kerala chief minister and CPM leader Pinarayi Vijayan posted on X: “The cabinet’s approval of the Kovind committee report on ‘one nation, one election’ escalates efforts to undermine India’s federal system. This Sangh Parivar move to push presidential rule and subvert constitutional values must be resisted. Democratic forces must unite to defend our democracy.”
Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party wondered if the move for simultaneous polls would meet the fate of the Women’s Reservation Bill. He said: “When the BJP topples the elected government of any state, will the elections of the entire country be held again?”
RJD’s Manoj Jha saw the announcement as nothing more than headline management, drawing attention to the fact that independent India had started with simultaneous polls. AAP’s national general secretary Sandeep Pathak likened the announcement to other disruptive moves of the Modi government like demonetisation, GST and farm laws.
Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren said: “They (BJP) want to divert attention and devise new narratives and today they passed the one nation, one election proposal. They want only their party to rule over the country and the state all the time and there is no other party to raise the voice of the people. This is a dangerous trend and these people with feudal mindsets and bent on disturbing communal harmony want to rule over the people. Beware of their designs.”
