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00:00The Union Cabinet recently approved the report of a committee under former President Ram Nath
00:10Kovind which essentially endorsed one nation, one election or simultaneous polls in the country,
00:16which would mean synchronizing the National Lok Sabha polls with those of state assemblies
00:21and other elections as well. This is a hugely controversial proposal for many reasons and one
00:27that should not see the light of day, in my view. For one, if you look at the terms of
00:32reference of this committee that was set up by the government at the centre, it basically just
00:37was told to find a way to make one nation, one election work, not even look at the feasibility
00:42of holding simultaneous elections in the country. So the mandate was skewed from the very start.
00:48If you look at the composition of the committee and those who are members in it,
00:51there was one token representative of the Congress party who then refused to be part
00:58of the committee simply because of the very skewed terms of reference, that was Adhiranjan
01:02Choudhury and all the other members are people who are either sympathetic to the BJP or who have
01:07endorsed one nation, one election as an idea in the past and basically had no other point of view.
01:12So the committee's report itself has been in a sense skewed from the start. Secondly,
01:19the idea of simultaneous elections is inherently anti-federalism and undemocratic. We know that
01:26in India democracy thrives not just nationally but at the state level as well. And something
01:31like simultaneous polls where you synchronise state elections, where in order to do that you
01:37will have to curtail the tenure of the assemblies of some states, where in a sense the dominance
01:44of national parties will rule the narrative and in a sense overshadow regional forces.
01:51That is what makes this exercise so undemocratic. And the fact also is that at the moment because
01:56of all the constitutional amendments that are required in parliament and by at least 50% of
02:01state assemblies to get this through, the BJP is not entirely comfortably placed as far as those
02:07numbers are concerned. So why did they then decide to push through and take a step forward with this
02:13proposal? I feel it's very much in keeping with Narendra Modi's style of governance, which is to
02:20have some big bang announcement or some big narrative that his government seeks to create
02:25in each term. So if it was Article 370 in the last term, this term is about further pushing forward
02:32their agenda and making a big bang about something like simultaneous polls. At the end of the day,
02:37in a country as diverse and plural as India with so many regional parties now in the fray,
02:42one nation, one election does not necessarily make it.