ONE STATE ONE ELECTION

Jaipur: After the idea of one state-one election was floated in the budget by Deputy CM and Finance Minister Diya Kumari, it has become a talking point among the state’s leaders & bureaucracy. While the idea is being appreciated for potentially reducing the manhours lost in public work due to frequent imposition of model codes of conduct for various elections, the elephant in the room is the substantial resources required to conduct such a mammoth exercise and how the tenures of various bodies will be adjusted to synchronize elections.

One concern shared across parties is the impact on public work during election periods. Leaders express that officials get drawn into the election process—from municipal to district levels—which disrupts ongoing public projects.

Jaipur Zila Pramukh Rama Devi highlighted how frequent model codes of conduct disrupt public works and pointed out the high cost of conducting elections repeatedly. “It also incurs significant costs to the exchequer,” she said.

However, Congress leader Giriraj Khandewal expressed concerns about the utilization of manpower if elections were scaled up to this extent.

“While one election may seem manageable, the real issue lies in managing government resources. Conducting elections on such a large scale could affect public work. Currently, staggered elections allow ongoing projects to continue with minimal disruption to the common man.”

In the previous government, some districts saw elections for Sarpanch, Panch, and other bodies up to 4-5 times, resulting in overlapping terms for office bearers. Implementing one stateone election could address this anomaly.

However, implementing this concept won’t be easy in Rajasthan, which has 11 Municipal Corporations, 34 Councils, 213 Municipal Palikas, over 11,000 Gram Panchayats, and more than 350 Panchayat Samitis. Previous Gehlot government created new Panchayat Samitis and Gram Panchayats, complicating the electoral landscape. Election Commission took 2 phases to conduct LS polls for 25 seats in the state, highlighting challenge of syncing elections across all bodies.