The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared a report submitted by a high-level committee recommending the “one nation, one election” plan.

The committee, headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, was set up by the Centre in September 2023 to look into the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections. The report it submitted in March recommended a two-step approach for implementing the plan.

The Opposition parties have criticised the government, saying that it has acted unilaterally in taking steps to implement the “one nation, one election” plan.

In the first step, the panel said that simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies could be held initially. In the second step, municipality and panchayat elections could be organised within a hundred days of the elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies.

The panel said there is a need to bring back the cycle of simultaneous elections as had been held during the initial decades after Independence. Holding elections every year “casts a huge burden on the government, businesses, workers, courts, political parties, candidates contesting elections, and civil society at large”, the report said.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw claimed that there is “widespread support for simultaneous elections in the country”.

“The recommendations [of the report] will be discussed at various forums across the country,” Vaishnaw said, urging the public to participate in the discussions. “A implementation group will be created to implement the report through legal processes.”

The proposal will have to be cleared by Parliament for it to be implemented. It is also expected that it will require a constitutional amendment, which would have to be ratified by the state legislatures.

Vaishnaw did not provide a timeline or details of how the plan will be implemented but said that the government will work towards creating consensus on the matter.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has for long been pushing for simultaneous elections.

On Tuesday, Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah said that the plan for holding simultaneous elections will be implemented in the current term of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. Shah was a member of the Kovind-led panel.

Reacting to the development on Wednesday, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said that the “one nation, one election” plan was not practical and claimed that the BJP had come up with the proposal to divert attention from the real problems amid a series of Assembly elections.

“It is not practical,” Kharge said. “It will not work. When elections come, and they are not getting any issues to raise, then they divert attention from real issues.”

Assembly polls campaign is underway in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir.

Asaduddin Owaisi, Hyderabad MP and the All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen chief, said that he opposes the plan, arguing that simultaneous elections will undermine federalism and democracy. “Frequent and periodic elections improve democratic accountability,” he said on social media.

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Manoj Jha told ANI that by introducing the “one nation, one election” plan, the Modi government was “trying to crush the soul of the federal structure”.

The Congress had said in September 2023 that the proposal goes against the basic structure of the Constitution. The proposal is based on the idea that the entire country is “one but this contradicts Article 1, which envisages India as a ‘Union of States’”.

The committee had also called for the preparation of a common electoral roll and voter identification cards by the Election Commission in consultation with the state-level election authorities.

The report had said that simultaneous elections would promote the development process and social cohesion, deepen the foundations of the democratic rubric and help realise aspirations of “India, that is Bharat”.

Apart from Kovind and Shah, the panel included former Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Finance Commission Chairperson NK Singh, former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subhash Kashyap and senior advocate Harish Salve. Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal was a special invitee to the panel.

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the Congress’ Lok Sabha leader at the time, had declined to be a part of the committee, calling it a “total eyewash”.

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