One Nation One Election: Articles, Reports and Bills

One Nation One Election is the proposal that the general election to the Lok Sabha and the general elections to the state legislative assemblies be held together on a single cycle, instead of the staggered calendar the country follows now. The idea is older than the slogan: the first four general elections, held in 1951-52, 1957, 1962 and 1967, were simultaneous polls for Parliament and the states. Examiners treat the topic as static polity, so what matters is the constitutional machinery behind it: the articles that fix the life of a House, the committees that have studied the question, and the amendments that have been proposed.

How the simultaneous cycle broke

A synchronised calendar lasts only as long as every House completes its term, and the term of a House is a maximum, not a guarantee. The Lok Sabha and an assembly can both be dissolved earlier than five years, and the administration of a state can be taken over by the Union under Article 356. Both things happened. Several assemblies were dissolved before time in 1968 and 1969 after their governments lost their majorities, and the fourth Lok Sabha was itself dissolved in December 1970, about a year before its term ran out, so Parliament voted in 1971 while the states had moved to clocks of their own. Every later mid-term election widened the gap, until elections of some kind were being held somewhere in the country almost every year, and the Model Code of Conduct was in force in one state or another for a large part of each year.

The constitutional provisions involved

Article 83(2) gives the Lok Sabha a term of five years from the date appointed for its first meeting, unless it is dissolved sooner, and lets Parliament extend that term by law by up to one year at a time while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation, the extension in no case running beyond six months after the Proclamation ceases to operate. Article 172(1) says exactly the same for a state legislative assembly. The power of dissolution lies with the President for the Lok Sabha under Article 85(2)(b) and with the Governor for an assembly under Article 174(2)(b). The superintendence, direction and control of elections is vested in the Election Commission by Article 324, and the power to legislate on elections to the legislatures belongs to Parliament under Article 327 and to a state legislature under Article 328. Section 15 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 adds the practical rule that the notification for an assembly general election may not be issued more than six months before the expiry of the term, which is why the Commission cannot simply advance a state poll by a year or two. Changing any of this needs an amendment under Article 368, and an amendment that touches the state field in this way needs ratification by the legislatures of not less than one-half of the states.

Committees and reports

The proposal has been examined by official bodies for four decades, and the names and years of their reports are the most frequently asked part of the topic.

What the High Level Committee recommended

The committee proposed a synchronisation in two steps. In the first step the Lok Sabha and all the state assemblies would vote together; in the second, elections to the panchayats and the municipalities would be held within a hundred days of that poll. The mechanism is an appointed date, to be notified by the President on the day of the first sitting of the Lok Sabha after a general election. Every assembly constituted after that date would then have a term ending with the full term of the Lok Sabha, however short that made it. If a House were dissolved before time, the fresh election would be held only for the remainder of the five-year period, called the unexpired term, so that the common cycle survives the break. The committee also recommended a single electoral roll and a single elector photo identity card, prepared by the Election Commission in consultation with the State Election Commissions, and an implementation group to carry the change through.

The amendment bills of 2024

The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024 and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024 were introduced in the Lok Sabha on 17 December 2024 and referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament. The constitutional bill proposes a new Article 82A to carry the appointed date and the curtailment of assembly terms, with consequential changes in Articles 83, 172 and 327. The second bill extends the same scheme to the assemblies of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir, which are governed by ordinary laws made by Parliament and not by Article 172. The committee took the view that synchronising Parliament with the assemblies does not need ratification by the states, while the single electoral roll and the inclusion of local bodies would, because they enter the state field.

The arguments on both sides

• For: repeated polls are expensive for the exchequer and for the parties; the Model Code of Conduct freezes new schemes for weeks at a time; central forces, teachers and government staff are pulled away from their own work again and again; governments stay in permanent campaign mode; and turnout tends to be better when a voter has to go to the booth once rather than twice.
• Against: cutting short an assembly term weakens federalism and the mandate the voters gave it; national issues and national leaders can crowd out state issues, which regional and smaller parties say would work against them; a government that falls in mid-term leaves an awkward gap; many more voting machines, paper trail units and polling staff would be needed on a single day; and a legislature that faces the voter once in five years is answerable less often.