BJPs agenda of one nation, one election is a threat to democracy and federalism – National Herald

The Modi government and the BJP are planning another serious assault on the Constitution and the very basis of parliamentary democracy in India. The BJP has conducted 25 webinars in the last week of December 2020 to propagate the idea of one nation, one election. This came in the background of Prime Minister Narendra Modi making one of his periodic pronouncements about the need for one nation, one election. The latest was at the 80th Presiding Officers Conference on November 26, which happened to be the Constitution Day.

The BJP webinars trotted out the now well-known arguments for the need for simultaneous elections of the Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections: that it will save a lot of expenditure; repeated elections bring the Model Code of Conduct into play which hampers development work and divert officials attention and so on.

In one of the webinars, Bhupendra Yadav, a general secretary of BJP, stated, Election is just a means in democracy, but repeated elections show that it has become the only objective of a democracy. Governance lags behind.

The underlining message is that too many elections are not good for democracy; more important is governance. This is in line with what the CEO of Niti Aayog, Amitabh Kant, said that there is too much democracy in India with regard to the farmers struggle. The message is as clear as daylight the call for one nation, one election is a logical extension of one nation, one leader and the leader has declared that this is not a matter of debate but a necessity for India.

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BJPs agenda of one nation, one election is a threat to democracy and federalism - National Herald