‘Double engine’ — cute slogan, a serious federal question

Every election season produces memorable slogans. Most fade once the votes are counted, but some linger and begin to shape how citizens think about governance itself. One such phrase is the “double-engine sarkar”. At first hearing, it sounds harmless, even cute: two governments working in tandem to accelerate development. Yet, behind the metaphor lies a serious constitutional question about India’s federal compact.

The idea is simple: if the same party governs both the Union and the State, development will move faster because the two governments will work in harmony. Taken at face value, this is unexceptionable. Of course governments at different levels should coordinate. That is indeed cooperative federalism. The real question is what happens when they do not share the same political ideology. But the “double-engine” slogan carries a deeper implication. It suggests that development flows preferentially to States governed by the same party as the Union government.

‘Aligned States’ benefit

During election campaigns the message is often made quite explicit: elect the party ruling at the Centre so that your State can benefit from faster development. If you do not, you will be starved of funds. This is where the constitutional difficulty begins.

India’s Constitution does not envisage a system where State governments depend on the goodwill, or charity, of the ruling party at the Centre. It creates a federal structure in which the Union and the States are partners within their respective spheres. The Union government represents the Republic as a whole, not merely those States governed by the party in power in New Delhi.

Public money collected through national taxation belongs to the Union of India, not to the ruling party. Taxes are collected in the name of the Republic, from citizens of every State regardless of how they vote. The distribution of these resources cannot depend on which party governs a State. A citizen in Kerala or Tamil Nadu pays the same taxes as a citizen in Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh. The constitutional promise is that both will receive their fair share in return.

India’s constitutional framers understood this danger. That is why they built institutional safeguards into the system. The most important is the Finance Commission. Under Article 280, the Finance Commission is appointed every five years to recommend how Union revenues should be shared with the States. Its purpose is vital: fiscal transfers must be rule-based, not politically negotiated. The Commission evaluates States on objective criteria — how far their incomes lag behind the national average, their population, geographic size, and fiscal capacity — so that politics cannot determine who gets what.

Issues raised by States, federal friction

Recent debates around fiscal federalism show how sensitive this issue remains. Southern States have expressed concern that the use of more recent population data in allocation formulas may penalise them for having successfully controlled population growth. Another issue is the increasing resort of the Union government to cesses and surcharges, which fall outside the divisible pool and are not shared with States. This effectively reduces the quantum of resources available for constitutionally mandated sharing, concentrating more fiscal power in Union hands and weakening the financial autonomy of States. The Sixteenth Finance Commission, which is currently deliberating, will have to grapple seriously with these concerns if it is to restore confidence in the fairness of the fiscal federal arrangement

Governments in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have argued that States which acted early to stabilise population should not be penalised in the distribution of national resources. Senior Ministers from these States have at times remarked, in visible frustration, that they feel reduced to “beggars”, pleading for funds that constitutionally belong to them. This is not the language of political theatre. It reflects a genuine structural grievance about the terms on which States participate in the Indian Union.

Federal friction is visible not only in financial matters but also in the legislative process. In recent years, Governors in some States have sat for long periods over Bills passed by elected legislatures, effectively using the constitutional office as an instrument of political sabotage. Tamil Nadu and Kerala have witnessed particularly prolonged delays. The pattern is difficult to ignore: the delays have been in States that are governed by parties opposed to the ruling dispensation at the Centre. A Governor who withholds assent to legislation passed by an elected Assembly is, in effect, a second engine running in reverse.

Such delays have drawn judicial attention. In State of Punjab vs Principal Secretary to the Governor of Punjab (2023), the Supreme Court of India made it clear that a Governor cannot use inaction to stall the legislative process. The Court emphasised that the Governor’s office is not meant to function as a parallel political authority over an elected legislature.

More recently, in State of Tamil Nadu vs Governor of Tamil Nadu (2025), the Court observed that prolonged inaction by a Governor in assenting to Bills is constitutionally impermissible. These rulings together signal a firm judicial commitment to protecting the legislative sovereignty of elected State assemblies.

The experience of Delhi over the past decade provides a further illustration. Many initiatives of the elected government became entangled in disputes with the Lieutenant-Governor and the Union government. Courts eventually had to intervene. The lesson is not merely about one city; it is about what happens when the machinery of federal governance is used to punish a political opponent rather than serve the public.

Seen together — fiscal transfers, gubernatorial delays, and the Delhi impasse — these developments form a coherent pattern. The “double-engine” slogan is not merely a campaign metaphor. It is a description of how governance actually functions when political alignment is absent. And that is precisely the constitutional problem. The form of federalism survives; its spirit is quietly hollowed out.

India’s federal system has faced similar tensions before. In earlier decades, Article 356 was frequently misused to dismiss elected State governments. The Court’s landmark judgment in S.R. Bommai vs Union of India placed important limits on that practice. The challenge today is subtler: governments may remain in office, yet, governance itself may become hostage to political alignment.

Structural reform needed

What is needed is not merely judicial intervention, but structural reform. The Finance Commission’s recommendations could be made more binding. A fixed statutory timeline, say, three months, could be prescribed for Governors to act on Bills, failing which assent would be deemed granted. Inter-State/governmental councils, already provided for under Article 263, could be revitalised as genuine forums for cooperative federalism rather than ceremonial gatherings. These are not radical proposals; they are logical completions of the constitutional architecture that the framers intended.

Political slogans will continue to animate election campaigns. But a slogan that implicitly threatens citizens with slower development if they choose the “wrong” party at the State level does not merely distort electoral choice; it corrodes the constitutional promise of equal citizenship. Development cannot depend on political alignment. It must rest on rules and institutions that treat every State, and every citizen, with equal fairness. That constitutional balance, not the number of engines pulling the same train, is the only engine India’s federal democracy truly needs.

S.Y. Quraishi is a former Chief Election Commissioner of India

Published – March 23, 2026 12:16 am IST