In his Republic Day address, President Pranab Mukherjee
batted strongly for simultaneous polls to State Assemblies
and the Lok Sabha. The President said the nation should
go back to the earlier days when elections were held simultaneously
but left the final decision to the Election Commission
of India and political parties. There is merit in this suggestion
because in the present scheme of things political parties and
the Central government are always in poll mode in some state
or the other and this makes them take their eyes off governance.
While the idealist position is to have simultaneous polls,
because it reduces expense and leaves the nation, State and
Central governments free for five years, in reality creating such
a situation will not only take time, but could result in some
States having to truncate the terms of their governments. If
there is a consensus on the issue, it is possible to reverse the
clock, but unless there is a mechanism to ensure that the dates
for simultaneous polls remain sacrosanct and above the term
of elected bodies, the system, in time, will go out of sync.
