One nation, one election unconstitutional, anti-federal: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee

CM Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said the proposed ‘one nation, one election’ bill was “unconstitutional, anti-federal and dictatorial” and accused the Union Cabinet of “bulldozing” its way through, ignoring every legitimate concern raised by experts and opposition leaders, reports Dwaipayan Ghosh.

Banerjee, who took to X to voice her criticism, also said ONOE “was not a carefully considered reform but an authoritarian imposition designed to undermine India’s democracy and federal structure.” Promising that it would now be a fight to “save India’s democracy from the clutches of autocracy”, she said Trinamool MPs would oppose the “draconian” legislation tooth-and-nail in Parliament. “Bengal will never bow to Delhi’s dictatorial whims,” she said.

The Bengal govt had earlier expressed its dissent on ONOE before the Ram Nath Kovind committee and Banerjee had claimed the proposal was riddled with “conceptual difficulties”.

Each elected body has a purpose, can’t be clubbed together: TMC

In Jan, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had written to the Ram Nath Kovind committee on ONOE saying, “If some Commissions/Committees have supported simultaneous elections throughout the country, there have been some others which have felt that simultaneous elections cannot be held within the existing framework of the Constitution. We need to go into the basics of the rationale and should not rely on discriminatorily edited excerpts of reforms reports here and there in favour of a biased view.”

Trinamool Congress in its X handle said that ONOE could lead to a “logistical and democratic nightmare”.

Speaking to reporters, party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said each elected body had a purpose of its own and could not be clubbed together.

“The federal structure and condition of our country, with all its diversity, along with the number of states, do not make this decision feasible. A voter elects a particular government for five years but things often change midway as we have seen before in many places such as Maharashtra. How will One Nation One Election function in such a scenario? We cannot agree to such an unscientific process. Besides, the Lok Sabha, the Legislative Assembly and the local bodies are different and so are their goals. This can create grounds for misleading propaganda,” he said.