<b>Letters:</b> Not entirely true

With reference to Shreekant Sambrani's piece, "One nation, one election?" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's view that holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies would save costs and pave the way for uninterrupted governance, merits consideration.

Sambrani puts forth statistics pertaining to the Assembly elections in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014 to drive home his point that whenever general elections coincide with polls to some state Assemblies the usual trend of people voting differently in the two polls converge. But his observations may not be entirely true: The Bharatiya Janata Party, which came to power at the Centre at that time, did not benefit from such a political situation and regional parties could keep it at bay.

S Kumar, New Delhi

Shreekant Sambrani responds:

Mr Kumar’s observation in fact supports my hypothesis of convergence.  It was not my case that the national trend in voting would prevail in all states.  All that I had said was that should the state and national elections coincide, the voter behaviour in the state would be convergent: the party (which need not be the national winner) that wins in one is likely to emerge victorious in the other.  In Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana, regional parties won both the state assemblies and a major share of the Lok Sabha seats.

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