Mamata Banerjee on Thursday rejected the BJP-led Centre’s "one nation, one election" proposal, alleging a "design to subvert" constitutional arrangements and allow in a presidential form of government through the backdoor.

"I also incidentally suspect that the instant design to subvert the basic structure of the Indian constitutional arrangements is aimed at converting the polity of ours into a presidential system," she wrote to a high-level committee, formed by the Centre and headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, that has sought suggestions on the idea of simultaneous national and state elections.

A presidential system centralises more power in one individual compared with the parliamentary system, where the Prime Minister is considered the first among equals.

Over the last few years, several commentators and Opposition leaders have suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, with his style of running the country, been trying to nudge the country towards a presidential system.

Mamata has in the past too spoken in public against the idea of simultaneous polls, sometimes accusing the BJP of an elaborate conspiracy to bring in a presidential form of government and destroy the nation’s federal structure.

“With profound considerations, the Constituent Assembly of India had presented us with a parliamentary/ cabinet system of government, keeping in view the diversities and pluralities of our great country. But now your design seems to be to tilt the system in favour of presidentialisation,” Mamata’s letter to the committee said.

“The design is kept covert, seemingly because autocracy wants a democratic garb now to enter the national public arena. I am against autocracy, and hence I am against your design.”

The Bengal chief minister, who sent the letter on behalf of her party to Niten Chandra, secretary to the high-level committee, told a news conference later in the day that this was not only Trinamul’s opinion but that of the INDIA bloc’s as a whole.

“Every state has its own regional problems; each state has elections at a different time. Some get stable governments, some don’t. Some get the majority, some don’t. Sometimes, even after the formation of a government, they are being felled (a likely allusion to the defections allegedly engineered by the BJP),” Mamata said at the news conference.

“If, at the Centre, nobody gets a clear majority for stability, what happens then? If the Centre collapses, will all the state governments fall as well? Those are all duly elected governments with five-year terms....”

She urged the Election Commission to consider the matter very carefully.

Mamata believes that “one nation, one election” will favour the ruling party at the Centre and push state-specific or regional issues to the sidelines, ensuring a near replication of the Lok Sabha results in the Assembly elections, multiple Trinamul seniors said.

They cited how, after winning an unprecedented 18 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the BJP was trounced in the Assembly elections of 2021.

“Had the two elections taken place simultaneously, Trinamul could well have been ousted from power in Bengal in 2019. But that would have only been on account of the two polls taking place together,” a Trinamul MP said.

Mamata told the news conference: “I do not appreciate it (concurrent polls) in a practical sense, because it is not possible, not acceptable, and not correct from the federal structure point of view.”

In her letter, Mamata said she had basic conceptual difficulties with the concept, which sounded dramatic and sensational but had two fundamental problems. One, the exact constitutional and structural implication of the expression “one nation”; and two, how to hold Lok Sabha and Assembly elections concurrently.

She wrote that forcing states where Assembly elections are not due to hold them prematurely just to introduce simultaneity would be a violation of the people’s electoral trust.

Also, imposing ad hoc administrative arrangements on the states in the name of introducing simultaneity would be undemocratic.

Mamata flagged how, over the past five decades, the Lok Sabha had witnessed several premature dissolutions because no political dispensation could secure a stable majority. Such situations, when fresh general elections are the only option, would snap the cycle of simultaneous polls.

“Non-simultaneous federal and state elections are a basic feature in the Westminster system which should not be altered. To paraphrase, non-simultaneity is part of the basic structure of the Indian constitutional arrangements,” her letter said.

“You seem to be conveying some sort of a unilateral top-down ‘decision’ already taken by the central government – to impose a structure that is certainly against the spirit of a truly democratic and federal one laid down by the esteemed Constitution of India.”