India’s democracy operates on multiple levels, each with its own election cycle.
There are general elections to choose parliament members, state elections to pick legislators, while rural and urban councils hold separate votes for local governance. By-elections fill vacancies caused by resignation, death or disqualification of representatives.
These elections happen every five years, but at different times. The government now wants to sync them.
In March, a panel, external led by Kovind proposed holding state and general elections together in its extensive 18,626-page report. It also recommended local body elections within 100 days.
The committee suggested that if a government loses an election, fresh polls would be held, but its tenure would last only until the next synchronised election.
While this may sound intense, simultaneous polls aren’t new to India. They were the norm from the first election in 1951 until 1967, when political upheavals and early dissolutions of state assemblies led to staggered polls.
Efforts to revive the system have been debated for decades, with proposals from the Election Commission in 1983, the Law Commission in 1999 and Niti Aayog, a government think-tank, in 2017.
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