Thrissur: Former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi said Centre’s One Nation One Election (ONOE) proposal will undermine the Constitution’s federalist structure and pluralistic ethos of the people. He was addressing a talk titled ‘One Nation One Election—A Nightmare for India’s Federal Polity’ that was organized in memory of Prof CJ Sivasankaran on Monday.
“Imposing ONOE would deprive the states of their right to decide when to dissolve the assembly and call for elections. We should take pride in the vast diversity we have and seek to leverage it, rather than dismantle it,” he said on the sidelines of the event.
Dismissing Centre’s argument that frequent elections drain the national exchequer, he said only Rs 4,500 crore is spent on a Parliament election and it is not a huge amount, considering India’s vast size.
Quraishi alleged that those backing simultaneous elections are talking about holding Parliament and assembly elections together, while leaving out local body polls, which are equally important and this exposed their hypocrisy. In India, there are 543 MPs and 4,120 MLAs but 13 lakh local body members at various levels. Now, the proposal is to hold local body polls 100 days after LS/assembly polls, which is incompatible with the reasons cited for simultaneous elections, he said.
Countering the contention that frequent polls lead to policy paralysis, he said the model code of conduct bans only announcement of new policies and transfer of officials. It doesn’t choke development activities. Experience shows that there is better service delivery during polls. Also, people experience their real power over political bosses only during polls, he said.
Criticizing Centre for appointing ex-President Ram Nath Kovind to head the panel on ONOE, Quraisi said it was unfair to drag Kovind into a political programme. He admitted that there is merit in the argument that frequent polls may increase corruption and aggravate the tendency to fan up communal/casteist divides. He said the formation of a national election fund can reduce corruption in polls. He said there should be a limit on the spending by political parties and candidates.
