BHUBANESWAR: Stating that chief minister Naveen Patnaik had mooted the idea of simultaneous polls way back in 2004 and implemented it, BJD MP Pinaki Mishra today said he will present the party's view point on the matter before the Law Commission on July 10.
The party fully supports simultaneous elections, Mishra told mediapersons and added that BJD has been called by the Law Commission for a meeting on Tuesday. “I will present a written representation on the party’s view point. The chief minister took a bold step by going for simultaneous polls in 2004. The Chief Minister is the originator of the idea and therefore the party supports it,” he said.
The chief minister had, earlier, extended support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for simultaneous elections. In Odisha, the assembly polls have been organised simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections since 2004.
The Law Commission had invited all national and state level political parties to hold consultations on July 7 and 8 on the practicality of conducting simultaneous polls to Lok Sabha and state legislatures.
The Commission has prepared a draft paper on “Simultaneous Elections – Constitutional and Legal Perspectives” and has sought opinions of “all stakeholders” including political parties, constitutional experts, bureaucrats and academicians on the paper before finalising its report and sending it to the government.
However, political parties including the Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the Trinamool Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communist Party of India, and the Nationalist Congress Party are yet to respond to the idea of simultaneous elections.
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