[Marxistindia] Oppose `One Nation, One Election' Drive of Modi Government

[news from the cpi(m)]

September 19, 2024

 

Press Statement

 

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the
following statement:

 

Oppose `One Nation, One Election' Drive of Modi Government

 

The Union Cabinet has accepted the recommendations of the Kovind Committee
for simultaneous elections to Parliament, state legislative assemblies and
local bodies.

 

The `One Nation, One Election' model, if implemented, will undermine the
parliamentary democratic system itself and the federal structure.

 

The proposals amount to truncating the life of some legislative assemblies
to align them with the Lok Sabha election.  Further, if a state government
falls and the assembly is to be dissolved, then the mid-term election held
will be only for the remaining term of the assembly.  All these violate the
rights of the people to elect their representatives for a term of five years
as envisaged in the Constitution.  Moreover, the recommendation of only
holding mid-term election for the remaining term of the assembly defeats the
very purpose of the new scheme, which is supposed to avoid multiplicity of
election.  After a mid-term election, there will have to be another election
at the end of the five-year term.  

 

The attack on federalism is all the more insidious with the move to hold
simultaneous election to all panchayats and municipal bodies.   This is
centralization to the extreme and goes against the very purpose of
decentralized decision-making local bodies.  Holding of panchayat and local
body elections is under the purview of the state governments and this is
sought to be denied.  It is also an absurd proposition given the huge
diversity of India and differing conditions in various states.

 

The `One Nation, One Election' concept is the brainchild of the RSS-BJP,
which wants to create a centralized unitarian State with one leader at the
helm.  

 

The CPI(M) will strongly oppose any move to amend the Constitution for this
purpose.  Every party, which values democracy, pluralism and federalism,
should come out firmly in opposition and unitedly thwart this pernicious
move.  

 

 

 

(Muralidharan)

For CPI(M) Central Committee office

 

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