The Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty–Ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024, and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024, more popularly known as ‘One Nation, One Election’, was down in the state over the weekend. The committee met with representatives of the main political parties, including Chief Minister of Goa Pramod Sawant and his cabinet Ministers Sudin Dhavalikar, Digambar Kamat, Subhash Shirodkar and Subhash Faldesai from the ruling side and representatives of the state units of national and regional political parties, for which representatives of the Congress and the AAP were present.
The committee as part of its ‘consultations’ also interacted with senior officers of the Government of Goa, including the Chief Secretary Dr V Candavelou, Director General of Police Alok Kumar, representatives of Finance held by CS, Home, Education, Tourism, Agriculture, Industries and Health Departments, the Labour Department, and the Chief Electoral Officer, Goa Dr Sanjay Goel and the deliberations focused on the administrative, logistical, financial and electoral preparedness/challenges required for conducting simultaneous elections.
And while members of civil society were allegedly excluded, the committee has taken on record the representation. Whether that will make any difference remains to be seen. In the clearest indication that his mind is already made up and that the ‘consultations’ are merely an exercise to draw up predetermined conclusions, the chairman of the committee, in comments made at a press conference after the conclusion of the exercise, said that the two-day consultations in Goa “received overwhelming support from stakeholders for the proposed 'One Nation, One Election' framework.”
The president unilaterally rubbished concerns raised by the opposition that simultaneous elections would weaken federalism or disadvantage regional parties by simply saying that “India's electoral history demonstrates that voters are capable of making independent choices for the Parliament and State Assemblies even when elections are held together.”
This is simply not true, and it is one of the reasons why the Election Commission of India bans the publication of exit poll predictions as well as the declaration of results of an election -- be it a state or parliamentary election -- until voting in all phases of a single election is complete. The opposition has raised valid fears that simultaneous elections can have an effect of drowning out independent voices, smaller political parties and lead to the formation of a ‘frenzy’ or a wave of the kind that has been seen in elections in the past.
The fact that the chairman of the committee appears to have already had his mind made up vitiates the entire ‘consultative’ process and reduces it to a mere formality. For any such consultative exercise to have any meaning, those helming the process need to begin with an open mind and be willing to listen to all sides of an argument and not simply come with preconceived notions and brush aside any contrary views.
What’s even worse is the suggestion that elections are somehow a ‘burden’ on the country and need to be streamlined in order that their impact is reduced. This attitude towards elections, which seemingly reduces them to an unnecessary inconvenience, is a symptom of a dispensation wanting to do away with elections altogether or have them in a manner in which the narrative can be tightly controlled, and outcomes become more predictable.
Indian democracy has been facing challenges for a while now, and this is the latest in the long line of assaults that it has been subjected to. This, like all the other instances of institutional capture, needs to be opposed if the integrity of the country’s elections and institutions is to be maintained.
