NEW DELHI: At the third meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) examining the ‘One Nation One Election (ONOE)’ Bill, former Chief Justice of India U U Lalit made several suggestions, including rolling out simultaneous polls in a phased manner, said sources.
During his deposition before the panel, Lalit said the concept of simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly elections was good in theory but many factors should be addressed for its smooth implementation. While Lalit served as the 49th CJI for a brief tenure in 2022, he was part of the Constitution bench that banned triple Talaq in 2017. In 2019, he recused himself from the Babri Masjid -Ayodhya dispute verdict.
Former Law Commission of India chairperson Ritu Raj Awasthi also shared his views as the panel began consulting experts and stakeholders. However, several Opposition members criticised the Bill, with Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra claiming “ONOE” will weaken democracy by tinkering with tenure of legislatures and impinge on people’s rights, according to sources.
Others including TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee, DMK’s P Wilson and Congress’ Manish Tewari raised several concerns regarding the Bill, arguing that it will undermine federalism and is anti- constitutional. A BJP ally wondered if a gap of five years between two elections will weaken elected representatives’ accountability to people, they added.
Awasthi spoke in detail about the benefits of the simultaneous Lok Sabha and state assembly elections in terms of savings and boost to development. He argued that the Bill is in accordance with basic structure of the Constitution and it doesn’t violate the Constitution or undermine federalism.
Awasthi was of the opinion that Parliament can legislate the bill. Awasthi led 22nd Law Commission, which submitted its report on Simultaneous polls to the Union Law Ministry in March last year. The Law commission had recommended synchronising the terms of state Assemblies in “two phases” in the next five years so that the first simultaneous elections could be held in May-June 2029.
IAS officer Niten Chandra, secretary of the high-level Kovind committee, and E M Sudarsana Natchiappan, a senior advocate and former Congress MP who had headed in 2015 a parliamentary committee that favoured simultaneous polls, also appeared before the panel. They could not share their views due to to paucity of time and are expected to present their views later. The parliamentary committee’s agenda for the February 25 meeting is briefly listed as “interaction with legal experts”.
The high-level committee headed by ex-president Ram Nath Kovind was constituted by the Modi government on ‘one nation one election’ and it had in its voluminous report strongly batted for the concept. Subsequently, the Union Cabinet accepted the committee’s recommendations and the government tabled two bills, including one seeking to amend the Constitution, in Lok Sabha.