No provision for combined Assembly, Lok Sabha polls in Telangana

The discussions of simultaneous elections to the Telangana State Assembly and the Lok Sabha next year is to mislead the public as there is no provision either in the Constitution of India or the Representation of the People Act that could pave the way for combined polls

Hyderabad: Is there is an attempt to mislead the public by triggering discussions over the possibility of simultaneous elections to the Telangana State Assembly and the Lok Sabha next year?

Indications are that such a discussion is being fuelled, though there is no provision either in the Constitution of India or the Representation of the People Act that could pave the way for combined polls to the State Assembly and the Lok Sabha.

---

Senior journalist Syed Amin Jafri feels this idea is being circulated to create confusion and pointed out that neither the Centre nor the Election Commission of India were empowered to extend the term of a State government, which would have to be done if the polls were to be postponed in Telangana. The only other way to make simultaneous polls a possibility was for Narendra Modi to curtail his own term at the Centre and force advancement of the Lok Sabha polls by around five months to coincide with the Assembly polls in other States including Telangana.

The term of the current Lok Sabha ends on June 16, 2024, while that of the Telangana State Assembly ends on January 16, 2024. There is a gap of five months between both.

“To have combined polls in Telangana, they will have to extend the term of the State Assembly by five months. The ECI cannot do that. The Constitution’s provisions on this are clear cut and the polls have to be held before the terms end,” Jafri said, citing Clause 2 of Article 83 of the Constitution.

“The House of the People, unless sooner dissolved, shall continue for five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and no longer and the expiration of the said period of five years shall operate as a dissolution of the House: Provided that the said period may, while a Proclamation of Emergency is in operation, be extended by Parliament by law for a period not exceeding one year at a time and not extending in any case beyond a period of six months after the Proclamation has ceased to operate,” the clause says.

The only way to extend the term is if there is a Proclamation of Emergency, and such a situation does not exist, Jafri points out, adding that Section 15 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 allows Assembly polls to be advanced, but the notification cannot be issued earlier than six months prior to the date on which the duration of that Assembly expires. Again, the Act does not allow the term to be extended, which means the polls in Telangana have to be held before January 16, 2024.

There were instances where the Centre imposed President’s Rule and delayed polls earlier, in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam. Then, Indira Gandhi’s Emergency had extended the term of her government by two years from 1975 to 1977. However, the situations that allowed this do not exist in Telangana now, therefore posing the question on why talk of combined elections was being triggered through reports in certain sections of the media.

There were only five times in the last three decades that there were simultaneous elections in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, with this including the only one in Telangana. That was in April 2014, prior to the official formation of the State on June 2. On April 30, simultaneous elections were held to the Assemblies of Telangana, AP and the Lok Sabha.

The other four instances were in November 1989, when the Centre convinced NT Rama Rao to advance the elections which should have been held in March 1990; in October 1999, when the Vajpayee government fell and Chandrababu Naidu agreed to advance the AP Assembly elections by two months; in May 2004, when Naidu dissolved the State Assembly and advanced the elections from October to May; and in May 2009, when the Assembly and LS elections coincided.