Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin accused the Union BJP government of seeking to push the ‘One Nation One Election’ Bill in Parliament with an ulterior motive of conducting a Presidential form of election, which went against the spirit of our Constitution, and vowed to resist it.
Stalin, who had been opposing the One Nation One Election (ONOE) concept ever since it was mooted by the BJP government, called upon all democratic forces to unite and fight tooth and nail the abomination imposed in the garb of electoral reform.
In a message on X, he said on Monday that the BJP lacked the majority to pass the critical legislation that threatened to alter India’s polity forever but was making a brazen attempt to settle scores and deflect attention from the BJP’s failures to address core issues affecting the country’s progress.
‘INDIA will resist the anti-federal & impractical “One nation one election” as it will push the country into the perils of unitary form of governance, killing its diversity and democracy in the process,’ he said.
If the proposed bill was passed and implemented, it would remove the legal checks and balances put in place in the form of periodic elections by the framers of our Constitution to prevent the country from slipping into anarchy and totalitarianism, Stalin said.
He said the move would also lead to the State elections losing their political significance and the destruction of regional sentiments and diversity.
The Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill and the Union Territories Law (Amendment) Bill that were earlier proposed to be moved in the Lok Sabha on Monday has been deferred, indicating that it could be delayed.
In the statement on objects and reasons, the Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had said that there was an imperative need for holding of simultaneous elections given that elections had become expensive and time-consuming and also pointed out that a committee under the chairmanship of former president Ram Nath Kovind had also recommended it.
Stalin, who virtually launched a political campaign against the ONOE through the message on X, also attached a newspaper article titled ‘Why simultaneous elections are impractical and complicated.’ That article says, ‘the administrative benefits from simultaneous elections are overstated at best, and non-existent at worst.’
