Simultaneous Elections

Minutes before the Lok Sabha was adjourned sine die, the House on Friday adopted a resolution recommending the two bills on holding simultaneous polls to a joint committee of the two Houses. Passed by a voice vote amid a din created by the opposition over Home Minister Amit Shah's remarks related to Ambedkar, the resolution moved by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal recommended to the Rajya Sabha to communicate to the Lok Sabha names of the members to be appointed by the upper houses to the joint committee. While 27 members on the panel will be from the Lok Sabha, 12 others will be from the Rajya Sabha. Former Union ministers Anurag Thakur and P P Chaudhary from the BJP, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of the Congress are among the Lok Sabha members, who will be part of the joint committee of Parliament that will scrutinise two bills on simultaneous elections. The two 'one nation, one election' (ONOE) bills, including one requiring an amendment in the Constitution, lay down the mechanism to

The government has moved to increase the strength of the joint committee of Parliament that will scrutinise the two bills proposing simultaneous elections from 31 MPs to 39, giving representation to more parties. The list of Lok Sabha MPs proposed by the government now includes one member each from the Shiv Sena (UBT), CPI(M) and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), besides two more members of the BJP and one more of the Samajwadi party. The list of business for the House for Friday includes a motion from Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal to refer the two bills to a joint committee, including 27 members from the Lok Sabha and 12 from the Rajya Sabha. The new Lok Sabha MPs proposed to be part of the committee are Baijayant Panda and Sanjay Jaiswal from the BJP, the SP's Chhotelal, Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Anil Desai, LJP's Shambhavi and the CPI(M)'s K Radhakrishnan. The committee will scrutinise the two "one nation one election" (ONOE) bills, including one for amending the Constitution. Fo

There is an imperative need for holding simultaneous elections for various reasons as polls have become expensive and time-consuming, according to the proposed bill being brought to implement the ambitious 'one nation, one election' plan. According to the constitution amendment bill listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha on Monday, the imposition of a Model Code of Conduct in several parts of the country which are poll-bound puts on hold the entire development programmes and causes disruption of normal public life. Frequent poll code imposition also impacts the functioning of services and curtails the involvement of manpower from their core activities for deployment for prolonged periods for election duties, the 'Constitution (129th) Amendment Bill, 2024' underlined. The bill proposes to insert a new article 82A -- simultaneous elections to the House of the People (Lok Sabha) and all legislative assemblies and to amend Article 83 (Duration of Houses of Parliament), Article 172 ..

The former president was showing strength across broad swaths of the country, improving on his 2020 performance everywhere from rural areas to urban centers

The idea needs a political consensus

CEC Sunil Arora said that the Election Commission has proposed to institute an annual lecture in memory of the country's first chief election commissioner Sukumar Sen

EC says in case of simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies in 2019, they will require nearly 2.4 mn EVMs, double the number required to hold only the Parliamentary polls

Rawat said it would be logistically possible to hold the elections together

The development comes against the backdrop of PM Narendra Modi floating the idea, which was subsequently articulated by President Pranab Mukherjee