One Nation One Election: A blessing in disguise for India

Candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha election each spent an average of Rs 57.23 lakhs for campaigning, according to an Atlas on last year's general elections released by the Election Commission of India on Wednesday (February 12,2025). Justifying the title of the most populous country of the world, India has a huge number of problems to solve. To cutdown these expenses, the Indian government's masterstroke move is " One Nation One Election
(ONOE)."


In India, elections take place almost every month and due to this disturbance in governance is quite common. This takes us to the concept of 'Model Code of Conduct.' It ensures fair and free elections and monitors the conduct of government and political parties; however, it also affects the pace of development programme and related activities in the states undergoing elections. With elections happening at different levels, national, state, and local, this pause repeats itself repeatedly.


For instance, in 2017, due to the imposition of Model Code of Conduct, development programmes remained largely suspended for about 7 months nationwide across the country (2 months in Jharkhand, almost 2 months in Maharashtra and Haryana too). That is over half a year; public investment slows down during this period and funds gets stuck in a loop. Not only this for every election security forces, schools and administrative systems are overburdened. Also, police, teachers and officers are pulled away from their duties and educational institutions turn into polling booths. Everything comes to a halt. Because of elections happening every year, politicians focus more on campaigning than on governance. Considering all these problems, BJP's ONOE bill seems to a successful manoeuvre.


In fact, the ruling government had published an entire paper showing how ONOE will boost India's GDP by 1.5% and add 4.5 lakh crores to our GDP, that's half of our expenditure on health and one -third of our education budget. The study has shown how during simultaneous elections inflation decreases by 1%, government expenditure boosts up by 18% while investment increases by 0.5%. So, overall, ONOE makes a perfect bill. However, there are certain issues that the government needs to focus on before passing the ONOE bill.


They are --

1. Taking care of the overlapping National and State Issues so that the National narratives do not overshadow regional voices.

2. ONOE should be able to justify its accountability towards the people. While achieving efficiency, accountability should not be compromised.

3. The BJP does have a plan on synchronizing the Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections, however it is still a question as to how it will be implemented in the states ruled by the opposition parties.

So, the ONOE bill although controversial, has the potential to be a game-changing move for the Indian Economy. As the government calls it 'the biggest reform in the electoral history of India,’ we sincerely believe it will boost India's economy and improve the political scenario of India