New Delhi: Amid talks gaining pace over Narendra Modi government’s ‘one nation one poll’ idea, the Law Commission has said that over Rs 4,500 crore will be needed to buy new EVMS and paper trail machines for “imminent” simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.
The commission, in its draft report on simultaneous polls issued last week, quoted the Election Commission saying that around 10,60,000 polling stations will be set up for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
“It (EC) further informed that as of now there is a shortfall of about 12.9 lakh ballot units, 9.4 lakh control units and about 12.3 lakh VVPATs (voter verifiable paper audit trail machines or paper trail machines), if simultaneous elections are to be held,” the report read.
According to it, an electronic voting machine (EVM), which includes a control unit (CU), a ballot unit (BU) and a VVPAT, costs about Rs 33,200.
“Thus, the EC has informed that an expenditure of about Rs 4,555 crore will be incurred on procurement of EVMs for an imminent simultaneous election,” the draft report read.
Keeping in mind the average shelf life of 15 years of an EVM, the Law Commission said that at the prevailing rates, Rs 1751.17 crore for conduct of the second simultaneous elections in 2024 and Rs 2017.93 crore for the third simultaneous elections in 2029 will be required for procuring EVMs.
“Thereafter, Rs 13,981.58 crore will be required for procuring new EVMs for the proposed simultaneous elections in 2034,” it said.
The EC said that the expenditure has been calculated on the basis of the prevailing rates.
If the Lok Sabha and assembly polls are held together, no extra expenditure will be involved, except for an additional EVM for each polling station and additional election material such as stationary.
At larger polling stations, additional polling staff may be required in view of an additional EVM, the draft report said.
Last week, Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat had said that ‘one nation one poll’ idea was not implementable until changes are made in the Constitution and law.
Earlier in August, he had rejected the idea of simultaneous polls claiming that the number of VVPAT machines are not enough to carry out the exercise.
He, however, had proposed holding one election a year as an alternative and had said that the move would also prevent violations of Model Code of Conduct on social media, as the social media platforms can be ordered to not run any poll-related news 48 hours before the elections.
The Narendra Modi government has been batting for the ‘One Nation, One Poll’ idea ever since it came to power at the Centre in 2014.
Prime Minister Modi, while addressing the governing council of NITI Aayog in June this year, had called for a “widespread” debate on holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
However, with the opposition parties including the Congress opposing the idea of simultaneous elections, the government is not in a position to affect the constitutional amendment that the exercise of holding the assembly and Lok Sabha polls simultaneously would require.
(With PTI inputs)
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