Holding simultaneous polls needs amendment to at least 5 articles of Constitution: Govt

The government on Thursday listed various “impediments” in holding elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies simultaneously and noted that such an exercise would result in huge saving to the public exchequer as well as political parties.

In a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said asynchronous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, including by-elections, result in prolonged enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct with its concomitant adverse impact on developmental and welfare programmes.

Simultaneous elections would result in huge saving to the public exchequer, avoidance of replication of effort on part of administrative and law and order machineries in holding repeated elections and bringing considerable savings to political parties and candidates in their election campaigns, he asserted.

He listed major “impediments/imperatives” for synchronisation of Lok Sabha and assembly elections, including bringing amendments in “not less than” five articles of the Constitution — Article 83 relating to duration of Houses of Parliament, Article 85 relating to dissolution of Lok Sabha by the President, Article 172 relating to duration of the state legislatures, Article 174 relating to dissolution of state legislatures, and Article 356 relating to the imposition of Presidents Rule in states.

He said there will be a need to obtain consensus of all political parties on the matter.

“Having regard to the federal structure of our system of governance, it is imperative that consensus of all state governments is also obtained,” he said.

There will also be a need to acquire additional electronic voting machines (EVMs) and paper trail machines which would cost a “huge amount, might be in thousands of crores”.

“Considering that life of machine is only 15 years, this would imply that machine would be used for about three or four times in its life span, entailing huge expenditure in its replacement after every fifteen years,” he said.

Additional polling and security personnel would also be required, the minister noted.

Meghwal said the issue now stands referred to the Law Commission for further examination to work out practicable road map and framework for simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

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