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Proposal for joint national and state elections in India raises concerns
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Frequent elections mean more opportunities for the electorate to extract freebies and other concessions from political leaders in lieu of their votes.
PHOTO: AFP
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NEW DELHI – Elections in the world’s most populous democracy are a big affair, with Indian voters often eagerly queueing up to choose their leaders. And they do so not just for the general election every five years, the last of which in 2019 saw nearly 615 million voters cast their votes at more than 10 million polling booths.
The calendar year is in fact dotted with multiple other elections – usually involving millions of voters each time – to pick state legislators as well as municipal and village council officials, enough to keep the authorities and political parties occupied round-the-clock.
