NEW DELHI: In the proposed bills on ‘one nation one election’, to be tabled in Lok Sabha Monday, the government has argued that there is an imperative need for holding simultaneous elections for various reasons as polls have become expensive and time-consuming.
In the Constitution (129th) Amendment Bill, 2024, the government has stated that imposition of a Model Code of Conduct in several parts of the country that are poll-bound puts on hold entire development programmes and causes disruption of normal public life.
The bill proposes to insert a new Article 82A – simultaneous elections to the House of the People (Lok Sabha) and all legislative assemblies – and to amend Article 83 (Duration of Houses of Parliament), Article 172 (Duration of State Legislatures) and Article 327 (power of Parliament to make provision with respect to elections to Legislatures).
It also provides that after its enactment, a notification is to be issued by the president on the date of the first sitting of Lok Sabha after a general election, and that date of the notification will be called the appointed date. The tenure of Lok Sabha will be five years from that appointed date. The tenure of all state assemblies, constituted by elections to assemblies after the appointed date and before the expiry of the full-term of Lok Sabha, shall come to an end on the expiry of the full term of the House.
“Thereafter, all general elections to the House of the People and all legislative assemblies shall be held together simultaneously. In case of dissolution of the House of the People or a legislative assembly, sooner than the full term of the House of the People or the legislative assembly, the term of the House or assembly constituted pursuant to elections shall be for the unexpired term of the House or the assembly,” the bill stated. The bill pointed out that the general elections to Lok Sabha and all state assemblies were held simultaneously in the years 1951-52, 1957, 1962 and 1967. “However, due to premature dissolution of some legislative assemblies in 1968 and 1969, the cycle of holding polls simultaneously with the House of the People got disrupted,” it stated.
The govt has also listed another bill, which needs a simple majority for passage in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. The Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024, proposes to make “consequential amendments” to the Govt of Union Territories Act, 1963, (related to Puducherry), the Govt of National Capital-Territory of Delhi Act, 1991, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, to “align the holding of simultaneous elections” along with Lok Sabha and state assemblies.