Focus: GS-2: Federalism. Representation of People’s Act
Why in News?
- The High Level Committee on One Nation One Election, and its members interacted with some leading economists of the country.
- A paper titled, “Macroeconomic Impact of Harmonizing Electoral Cycles” was presented to the committee.
- The paper brought out that, apart from the expenses, there are wider economic ramifications in addition to repetitive expenses, which entailed issues of GDP growth, investment, expanded public expenditure, fiscal deficit, education, health outcomes, and law and order, besides uncertainty in the minds of investors and other societal stakeholders.
- The HLC decided to have a wider discussion on the paper.
About One Nation, One Election:
- The fundamental concept behind One Nation, One Election is to coordinate the timing of Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections across all states, aiming to reduce the frequency of polls throughout the country.
- This practice was in effect until 1967 but was disrupted due to various factors such as defections, dismissals, and government dissolutions.
- The continuity of synchronized elections was first disrupted in 1959 when the Centre utilized Article 356 to dismiss the government in Kerala at that time.
- Following this, due to defections and counter-defections among parties, several Legislative Assemblies dissolved after 1960, leading to separate elections for Lok Sabha and State Assemblies.
- The proposal for conducting simultaneous elections was initially put forward in 1999 by the Law Commission, chaired by BP Jeevan Reddy.
