Ahmedabad: When the Election Commission of India (EC) announced the poll schedule for Himachal Pradesh on Friday, it left a conundrum as to why the Gujarat schedule was not declared simultaneously going by the convention of these two States going to the hustings and getting the results together.
Polling for the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly will be held in a single phase on November 12 but the votes would be counted on December 8 – leaving a huge gap of 25 days between the polling and the results.
This should mean the Gujarat polls would be held around the same time as Himachal to ensure the result for both states is declared on the same day – on December 8. And so, the elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state may well be declared after Diwali. But the question that has perplexed many is why then were the Gujarat dates not announced.
There’s an even bigger puzzle created by the statement by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar that there is a huge gap of 40 days between the expiry of the term of both the assemblies. The term of Gujarat Assembly ends on February 18, 2023, and that of Himachal on January 8, 2023. Experts say this could well mean that the Gujarat polls might be held in January 2023. According to the norm, there should be a gap of 30 days between the election result of two states to ensure one doesn’t impact the other.
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Retired Election Commissioner OP Rawat, who was an EC during the 2017 Gujarat and Himachal elections says, “The only explanation for the long gap between polling and counting in Himachal is that Gujarat polls will also be held around the same time, to ensure the votes are counted and result declared on the same day.”
But the Gujarat dates were not announced, inviting criticism from the Opposition that the Election Commission is giving a leeway to the BJP-ruled Gujarat Government to announce a slew of “revadis” before the Model Code of Conduct puts a stop to it.
As an explanation, the CEC pointed out that the EC was not in favour of keeping a state unduly waiting for the election process to complete, while simultaneously ensuring that there is a balance between two states in imposition of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC).
This is to avoid a situation where one state remains under the MCC for a longer time and the other for a lesser time. Once the MCC is implemented on the day the poll notification is issued, which would be Monday in Himachal, all ongoing and new government projects, welfare announcements, postings and transfers of officials are suspended until a new government takes charge.
OP Rawat makes a pertinent point here. He says, “It is appreciable and this will be the first time that the EC is fine-tuning the schedules like this” to ensure that the MCC doesn’t unduly hang over any State.
If this is the case, the Election Commission has at least up to November 1 to declare the Gujarat dates to have the results out on December 8. “Since Himachal Pradesh is going to the polls in a single phase, it will be under the MCC for 28 days and, if Gujarat voting is conducted in two phases as was in 2017, the MCC would apply for 35 days,” explains Rawat. If the Gujarat polls are announced in two phases on November 1, the MCC would apply for 37 days until the counting of votes, along with Himachal.
When asked about not announcing the Gujarat dates with Himachal, CEC Rajiv Kumar told mediapersons, “We are following past precedent in keeping the announcement of dates for Gujarat in abeyance for now. Multiple state polls together lead to longer wait-time for the declaration of results.”
The EC cited 2017 elections as the latest precedent when the poll dates were separately announced on October 12, 2017, for Himachal and single-phase polling was held on November 9. Gujarat’s schedule was announced on October 25 for two-phase voting on December 9 and December 14. The results of both the states were declared together on December 18.
However, this was not a convention but an exception. Rawat confirms that the Gujarat dates were announced separately in 2017 because of heavy floods in the State and as many as 13 district collectors were busy in the relief works. The CEC in 2017 was Achal Jyoti, a Gujarat cadre bureaucrat.
“Given this situation, if the polls were announced, they would have to be pulled out for the elections and the flood-affected people would have suffered,” he says. The elections in both the states were held simultaneously in 2012, 2007 and 1998, except in 2002 because of the post-Godhra communal riots in the State and 2017 because of the floods.
