About the author
Suresh Borana is a management graduate of Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management (LBSIM), New Delhi, having spent more than two years in operations and process optimisation, at a professional level. A two-time UPSC Civil Services Mains candidate, he has a keen interest in public policy, governance, and management. His work embodies an interdisciplinary approach to policy, institutions and organizational effectiveness.
Institutional integrity before electoral efficiency
In 2025, mathematicians, Stony Brook and Rutgers released a formal mathematical proof that if societies are politically polarized, then having simultaneous elections tends to make it more likely that one party will sweep every level of government. In the very same year highest number of electoral violations were reported In Indonesia, a country which closely resembles to India in terms of its federal structure and diverse population. I agree that the problem ONOE is trying to solve is a real one and it's necessary. For the last 3 decades, India had experienced an election every single year. In every Lok Sabha cycle, nearly 5 to 7 State Assemblies' elections are scheduled to occur, with the consequence that government is put in a constant campaign mode. The Election Commission’s Annual Report of 1983 acknowledges that elections take up the entire administrative process, and the development activities are postponed. This has a broader implication for a nation of 99 crore voters who are working towards the vision of Vikshit Bharat 2047.The Kovind Committee’s report of March 2024 argues that consolidated elections will cost around ₹4,500 crore, as against ₹3,870 crore for one single Lok Sabha election of 2014. Moreover, the Model Code of Conduct would lock the new announcements made by the government once every five years rather than locking developmental policy every few months. The committee also expects GDP to improve by 1.5 per cent. Along with the listed merits, the fact that thirty-two of the forty-seven parties consulted supported it warrants that ONOE requires attention, not dismissal. However, a study by the IDFC Institute in 2015 revealed that in cases where Lok Sabha and state elections are held at the same time, same party has won at both levels, 77% of the time. If you separate the elections by 6 months, the hit ratio falls to 69%. It drops even further to 43%, if the elections are widely separated. Every six months of electoral independence restores 8 points of breathing room to the issues at hand, statewide. Likewise, the Covid-19 governance was audited during the Bihar election in 2020. In West Bengal, the outcome of the 2021 election was a litmus test for the 10-year rule of the TMC. The Uttar Pradesh result 2022 was a verdict on law and order. These outcomes were not hindrances to governance, but rather electoral actions, undertaken democratically. Dr. Vanthangpui Khobung and Dr. Savita Sagar of NCERT contends that the simultaneous elections from 1951 to 67 were successful in India because there was no wave distortion as Congress was in power at both the national as well as at the state level. This was no example of a healthy democracy. This was democracy in the form of single party control. Neither of such condition exists in 2026 due to prevalence of multiple parties functioning across the nation, thus eroding the hegemony of a single party control.
So, if ONOE is premature, what must be done first? In India three pre-conditions must be satisfied if it is going to have a credible simultaneous election. Firstly, independence of ECI. The appointment of Gyanesh Kumar as Chief Election Commissioner under the 2023 Act itself came in for criticism on the grounds that the process did not strictly follow the Supreme Court's order in Anoop Baranwal (2023). The movement towards the centralization of all electoral processes in India cannot make any progress if the independence of the election body is being contested in court. Second, financing integrity. The Supreme Court in 2024 struck the electoral bonds down as unconstitutional due to deliberate opacity and quid pro quo in corporate and political relationship. The Center of Media Studies (CMS) has estimated the total electoral spend for 2019 at ₹60,000 crore. That's just a small part of the ₹4,500 crore ONOE is estimating it would save in administration. Prior to fixing the calendar, the money needs to be fixed. Third, legal harmonisation. In 2019, Indonesia held simultaneous elections and reported a 58.3% increase in violations, from 13,000 to 21,169 cases, since election laws in the country overlapped and contradicted one another, as documented by researchers at Universitas Diponegoro. India is in a similar predicament, with several all-encompassing legislations and conflicting jurisdictions. These arguments do not seek to challenge the intent of ONOE forever. South Africa holds simultaneous national elections but also holds mid-term elections for municipalities promoting mid-term accountability. Germany avoided the chaos of government change by a Constructive Vote of No-Confidence, without changing the electoral timetable. Former CEC S.Y. Quraishi has long been advocating for state funding of elections to address the problem of corruption which ONOE aims to correct. Furthermore, Lok Sabha has passed the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill with a 269-198 vote majority, suggesting a positive sentiment on ONOE. However, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had warned that constitutional morality differentiates from constitutional legality. A reform may be both legal and yet hollow in the democratic aspects.
The issue that Parliament must address is not whether a single nation should have one election or not. It is a question of whether any nation can afford to have an unreformed institution running a simultaneous election for the entire nation. Insulating the commissions appointment process from executives, funding elections through the state and harmonizing the laws surrounding elections should be the first step forward. In conclusion, integrity of the institutions should come before efficiency of the electoral process.