New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamul Congress (TMC) president Mamata Banerjee on Thursday expressed disagreement with the concept of simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and Assemblies under the “One Nation, One Election” proposal, and said it would be against the basic structure of India’s constitutional arrangements.
In a letter sent to the high-level committee on “One Nation One Election” that is seeking public opinion, Banerjee pointed out two major issues with the concept and termed it to be “a design to subvert the basic structure of the Constitution” and create a system to allow “autocracy (in) a democratic garb to enter the national public arena.”
The two conceptual issues raised by Banerjee are, “the constitutional and structural implication of the term “One Nation” and questioned the timing of parliamentary and Assembly elections, particularly when there is a significant gap in existing poll cycles.” Banerjee also raised some ‘minor’ objections, including “preparation of common electoral rolls”. She also criticised the committee for failing to include chief ministers.
In her letter to the panel secretary Dr Niten Chandra, Banerjee wrote that in 1952, the first general elections were simultaneously conducted for the central and state levels but then over a period of time this stopped.
“There was such simultaneity for some years. But the coevality has since been ruptured... different states have different election calendars now and those are also susceptible to changes due to political developments. States which are not expecting elections should not be forced to hold for the sake of introduction of coevality only,” Banerjee wrote adding that it will be a basic violation of the electoral trust of the people who have elected their Vidhan Sabha representatives for full five years.
Banerjee also pointed out potential ruptures in the “One Nation, One Election” idea if either the Lok Sabha or a state Assembly “is subject to untimely dissolution”, and warned, “Instability of a government at the centre should not destabilise state legislatures...”
