India wants to make its own electoral model, where citizens will have the opportunity to elect the central government and the respective state (federal) governments together.
NDTV wrote, after six decades, India is now looking to reintroduce the ‘One Nation, One Election’ system. The Union Cabinet led by the Prime Minister has approved the proposal and approved the bill to implement it. The bill is likely to be taken up for passage in the ongoing session of Parliament.
The media outlet also reported that this is not the first time that such an election system has been tried in India. When they gained independence in 1947, the country’s founding fathers planned a model for parliamentary and state assembly elections together. This is how voting has been conducted in India since the first election in 1952.
However, everything changed in 1967, the year when India last voted under the ‘One Nation, One Election’ system. At that time, voting was held simultaneously everywhere except Uttar Pradesh (formerly United Pradesh); Uttar Pradesh was voted in four phases.
The voting took place from February 15 to 21 of that year. This was India’s fourth general election, and 520 Lok Sabha seats and 3,563 assembly seats were up for grabs.
This was followed by a period of coalition politics and the eventual end of the practice of simultaneous voting in the country. The Congress was the only party to govern India until 1967, but by then it had faced various challenges and setbacks.
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had died a few years earlier; his daughter Indira Gandhi was under pressure from key allies. The Congress faced a large-scale ‘anti-incumbency’ (voting against the incumbent) and internal power struggles. Ultimately, India lost the war against China in 1962.
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