One Nation, One Election - A defining test for Indian Democracy

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Mr Narendra Modi is unlike any other party in India — past or present. Its goal is not to win elections as often as possible; its goal is to win elections and remain in power forever. In that sense, the BJP is like the Communist Party of China. The CPC’s road to power was through a brutal war against the Japanese invaders and, after Japan’s surrender in 1945, through a bitter civil war against the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1949. The CPC has remained in power since.

Mao Zedong proclaimed a one-party state in China in 1949; India won Independence from Britain in 1947 and proceeded to write a secular, democratic and Republican Constitution. India’s Constitution adopted in 1950 allows multiple political parties and mandates periodic elections and peaceful transfer of power at the Union-level and the State-level. This is the crucial difference between China and India.

BJP and RSS

At its inception, the Jan Sangh, and later the Bharatiya Jan Singh and, in its present form, the Bharatiya Janata Party, believed in the Constitution of India. It was nurtured as a democratic party and positioned on the right of the political spectrum. It strove to distinguish itself from the Indian National Congress that occupied the space on the left-of-centre. The BJP remained a democratic party through the years under the leadership of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya, A.B. Vajpayee and LK Advani. However, the BJP’s political guru, the RSS, had — and has — a different view of the polity and political architecture of India: RSS believes that India must be a country with one-language, one-culture, one political party and, to the extent feasible, one religion.

Mr Narendra Modi, prime minister and de facto leader of the BJP, is an ideologue who accepts the RSS’ view of India but, at the same time, totally practical to realize that the RSS’ goal can be achieved not through electoral victory alone but through carefully crafted steps. The Constitutional, legislative and administrative steps taken by the Modi government since 2014 must be viewed through this prism. Mr Modi’s strident advocacy of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the Uniform Civil Code, the passage of the J & K Reorganization Act, the creative interpretation of Article 73, Article 162 and the provisions of Parts XI, XII and XIV of the Constitution, and the determined effort to implement One Nation One Election (ONOE) are all steps calculated to usher in the so-called Viksit Bharat.

Expectation and Disappointment

Mr Modi was ascendant from 2014 to 2024. He confidently expected the people of India to give his party 400+ seats in the Lok Sabha in the 2024 election, but he suffered a major setback — the people gave him only 240 seats, short of even a simple majority of 543 seats. All his efforts since 2024 are intended to recover lost ground before 2029. Suppose the BJP had succeeded in passing the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026. In the guise of reservation of seats for women, it would have allowed delimitation and gerrymandering. The new laws would have rendered the southern states irrelevant in the governance of the country. Moreover, the BJP would have bulldozed Parliament to pass other Amendments to the Constitution including the Bill(s) to implement the concept of ONOE in 2029.

Until the LS elections in 2024, the BJP thought it had a winning formula to win elections —a ruthless organizational machine in the nine Hindi-speaking states and Gujarat, a reasonably-fit party in the Hindi-knowing states of Maharashtra, Punjab and the districts of Jammu, money power, compliant Governors, a scared bureaucracy, submissive investigative agencies with power to search, seize, arrest and prosecute, a captured or tamed media, tacit support of the Election Commission of India, and a restrained judiciary. The obstacles to absolute power are the Southern states and West Bengal.

ONOE Bill must be Defeated

I am afraid the ‘One Nation One Election’ Bill, if passed, may splinter the Opposition bloc. Regional and one-State parties along with the Congress constitute the Opposition bloc. They have differences among themselves and contest against each other in elections to the State Assembly and local bodies. At the same time, they have the potential to constitute a bloc in the LS election like they did in 2024. If simultaneous elections are held to the LS and state Assemblies (and eventually to local bodies), the regional parties will find it extremely difficult to come together and form a bloc which alone will give them the best chance to defeat the BJP in a LS election. ONOE will put paid to that ambition. Hence, the BJP views the passage of the ONOE Bill as the crowning piece of its grand design.

The lesson of 2024 LS elections is that despite many parties forming the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, they could not defeat the BJP which emerged as the single largest party with 240 seats. With give and take, the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has the potential to expand itself. If the parties do not learn the lessons, many small parties will fall by the wayside and may disappear. Eventually, two grand Alliances in a LS election will prevent the monopolization of power by the BJP at the Centre, create alternative political choices, and sustain the secular, democratic and Republican Constitution of India.