Stability versus Accountability: Reconsidering No-Confidence Motions and Premature Dissolution under One Nation, One Election

Abstract

Abstract

One Nation, One Election (ONOE) is commonly defended as an administrative reform capable of reducing electoral expenditure, limiting recurrent enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, and enabling governments to concentrate on policy. That account, however, treats synchronisation as a problem of calendars while understating its deeper constitutional consequence: a common electoral cycle can survive only if the ordinary relationship between legislative confidence, executive tenure and dissolution is redesigned. This paper examines that redesign through the competing values of stability and accountability. It argues that neither value is constitutionally complete in isolation. Stability without continuing responsibility risks insulating an executive that has lost representative legitimacy; accountability without institutional continuity may allow strategic defections, opportunistic alliances and repeated dissolutions to exhaust democratic government. The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024 addresses premature dissolution by giving a newly elected House only the unexpired portion of the common term. Although this preserves the calendar, it may produce unequal mandates, abbreviated elections and incentives to manipulate the timing of governmental collapse. By contrast, a constructive vote of no confidence can preserve continuity by requiring those who remove a ministry simultaneously to demonstrate an alternative majority. Yet an unqualified constructive-vote model may entrench minority governments, weaken opposition scrutiny and transfer excessive power to party leadership. Drawing upon Indian constitutional text, Supreme Court doctrine, committee proposals and comparative parliamentary practice, this paper develops an accountability-preserving stability model. It proposes a carefully regulated constructive vote, time-bound investiture, transparent floor procedures, rapid adjudication of defection disputes, constrained dissolution, neutral caretaker conventions and federal safeguards. It additionally examines who should bear the democratic costs of governmental failure: representatives unable to construct a majority, constitutional authorities managing a transition, or citizens asked to confer an artificially shortened electoral mandate. The central claim is that ONOE can be constitutionally defensible only if synchronisation remains subordinate to responsible government. Electoral economy cannot become a reason to make governments less removable; nor should every loss of confidence automatically compel an election. The true test of reform is therefore not whether elections occur together, but whether power remains continuously answerable between elections.