Simultaneous elections, as proposed by the High-Level Committee on One Nation One Election, would alter the federal balance of the Constitution. Critically analyse.

Introduction:

The High-Level Committee on Simultaneous Elections (Ram Nath Kovind, report submitted 14 March 2024) and the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill 2024 propose synchronised Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections, with a single voters' list and shortened residual terms — a structural shift that engages the federal balance of the Constitution and the basic-structure doctrine.

Federalism: Truncating an Assembly's life to align it with the Lok Sabha rewrites Article 172 and weakens separate State mandates; S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) holds federalism as basic structure, and the proviso to Article 368(2) requires ratification by half the State Legislatures before any seat-shortening can take effect.

Feasibility: Mid-term collapses, Article 356 episodes (Manipur 2025 being the eleventh imposition) and hung Houses complicate the proposed Article 82A 'appointed date' and the unexpired-term concept; the 1967 simultaneous-elections breakdown after defections is a cautionary precedent, and the Joint Parliamentary Committee constituted in December 2024 is still examining feasibility.

Trade-offs: Cost savings flagged by the 170th and 255th Law Commission Reports must be set against concentration of national-issue voting that dwarfs State-level accountability; Sweden and South Africa fixed-term comparators show that voter-attention discipline depends on a strong upper house, which India's Rajya Sabha post the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act 2003 lacks.

Way forward / Conclusion:

Sequential reform — a fixed-term Lok Sabha first, with decoupled local-body elections later — is more compatible with the basic-structure protection of federalism than a single-stroke amendment to Articles 83 and 172.