Indian Polity Quiz: One Nation One Election: Constitutional Aspects

Article 83(2) provides that the House of the People shall continue for five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and no longer, and that the expiration of that period operates as a dissolution of the House; it also allows Parliament to extend the term by up to…

The first four general elections, in 1951-52, 1957, 1962 and 1967, were held simultaneously for Parliament and the state assemblies, and 1967 was the last of them.

The High Level Committee on Simultaneous Elections was constituted on 2 September 2023 under the chairmanship of former President Ram Nath Kovind and submitted its report on 14 March 2024, recommending a two-step synchronisation of elections and a single electoral roll.

The Law Commission of India, in its 170th Report on Reform of the Electoral Laws in 1999, recommended that there should be one single election for the Lok Sabha and all the legislative assemblies once in five years, and the Commission returned to the subject in a draft report in…

The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024, introduced in the Lok Sabha on 17 December 2024, proposes a new Article 82A under which the President notifies an appointed date on the first sitting of the Lok Sabha after a general election, and the term of every assembly constituted…

The committee proposed a synchronisation in two steps: first the Lok Sabha and all the state legislative assemblies would go to the polls together, and then elections to the local bodies, that is the panchayats and the municipalities, would be held within a hundred days of that poll.

The proviso to Article 83(2) allows Parliament to extend the term of the Lok Sabha by law for a period not exceeding one year at a time while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation, and the extension cannot in any case continue beyond a period of six months after…

Article 172(1) provides that every legislative assembly of a state shall continue for five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and no longer, with the same Emergency proviso that applies to the Lok Sabha, so an assembly term can be extended by one year at a time…

Article 324 vests in the Election Commission the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to Parliament and to the legislature of every state, and of elections to the offices of President and Vice-President.

Its 79th Report of December 2015 examined the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections, found the idea workable and suggested that the polls be held in two phases within a five-year cycle so that the number of election years could be cut down.

The committee recommended that where a House has to be dissolved early, because of a hung House or a no-confidence motion for example, the mid-term election should be for the remainder of the five-year period of the House that was dissolved, which the report calls the unexpired term.

India's first general election was spread over the winter of 1951 and 1952 and is dated 1952, the year the first Lok Sabha and the first set of state legislative assemblies were constituted.