Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.
Charge on One Nation One Election: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has strongly criticized the BJP for ‘one nation, one election’. He said on Sunday that people need ‘One Nation, One Solution’ to get rid of BJP. He said that this would harm our democracy, Constitution and evolved time-tested procedures.
The Congress President has made a post regarding this on X. He wrote in his post, ‘Modi government wants democratic India to gradually turn into dictatorship. This gimmick of forming a committee on ‘One Nation, One Election’ is a ploy to destroy India’s federal structure.
Kharge further wrote that till 1967, we neither had that many states nor did we have 30.45 lakh elected representatives in our panchayats. India is the largest democracy in the world. We have lakhs of elected representatives and their future can no longer be decided in one go. The Constitution of India would require at least five amendments and the Representation of the People Act, 1951 would see massive changes. Constitutional amendments would be needed to reduce the term of the elected Lok Sabha and Assemblies. Similar changes will be needed at the level of local bodies too, so that they can be synchronized.
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He refuted the arguments in favor of simultaneous elections, saying that the ‘cost-saving’ argument was silly. Conducting all elections between 2014-19, including the Lok Sabha elections, cost the Election Commission about Rs 5,500 crore, which is only a small fraction of the government’s budget. Apart from this, the Congress President has raised many questions.
1. Is the proposed committee best suited to discuss and decide on perhaps the biggest disruption to the Indian electoral process?
2. Should such a huge exercise be carried out unilaterally without consulting political parties at the national level and state level?
3. Should this mammoth operation take place without involving the states and their elected governments?
