NEW DELHI: The first official meeting of the high-level committee on ‘one nation, one election’, chaired by former President Ram Nath Kovind, will take place on September 23.
It means no bill on simultaneous polls would be tabled in the special session of Parliament scheduled for September 18-22, despite rumour mills suggesting otherwise. However, it does not extinguish speculation on the Centre looking to initiate the process of holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies at the earliest.
The government had on September 2 notified an eight-member committee to look into the matter with Kovind as its head.
Its members include Home Minister Amit Shah, senior advocate Harish Salve, former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subhash Kashyap, chairman of the 15th Finance Commission N K Singh, former CVC Sanjay Kothari and former leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Though Congress leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was named as a member, he refused to be part of the committee terming it an ‘eyewash’.
Last week, Amit Shah and Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal met Kovind and discussed the panel’s meeting and its venue.
The committee has already begun work and is expected to submit its report “at the earliest”.
While Meghwal is a special invitee to the panel, the law secretary is the committee’s secretary.
The committee will look into the feasibility of holding not only the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections simultaneously, but also polls to municipalities and panchayats, according to the gazette notification.
The committee will analyse and recommend possible solutions linked to simultaneous elections if there is a hung house, no-confidence motion, defection, or any such other event.
A single electoral roll and identity card for voters valid for the national, state, civic body and panchayat elections will be explored, the government said in the notification.