BHUBANESWAR:BJD MP Pinaki Mishra will present his party’s stand on simultaneous polls before the Law Commission on July 10 though, he said, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had mooted the idea way back in 2004.
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 BJD’s view. The Chief Minister took a bold step by going for simultaneous polls in 2004. He 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 national and State level 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 sought opinions of “all stakeholders” including political parties, constitutional experts, bureaucrats and academicians before finalising its report and sending it to the government.
However, the Congress, the CPI(M), the Trinamool Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the CPI and the Nationalist Congress Party are yet to respond to the idea.