ONOE Bill: Priyanka Gandhi among four Congress members to be on House panel

The BJP is considering the names of its seasoned MPs Ravi Shankar Prasad and Nishikant Dubey as nominees for the parliamentary panel that will scrutinise simultaneous poll bills, while Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Manish Tewari are set to be among the Congress representatives, sources said.

Sukhdeo Bhagat and Randeep Surjewala are the Congress' other choices for the joint committee of Parliament.

Kalyan Banerjee and Saket Gokhale of the Trinamool Congress, Shrikant Shinde of the Shiv Sena, Sanjay Jha of the JD(U), and T M Selvaganapathi and P Wilson of the DMK are expected to be part of the panel which may have 31 members -- 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha.

 

Sources said Anurag Thakur and P P Chaudhary are also being considered as the probable BJP choices for the panel in which the saffron party and its allies will be in a majority due to their numerical superiority in Parliament.

The two 'One Nation One Election' (ONOE) bills, including one requiring an amendment in the Constitution, that lay down the mechanism to hold simultaneous elections were introduced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday after a fiery debate.

Opposition parties dubbed the draft laws -- a Constitution amendment bill and an ordinary bill -- as an attack on the federal structure, a charge rejected by the government.

Speaking to reporters on the Parliament premises, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi had termed the bills "anti-constitutional".

"It is against the federalism of our nation. We are opposing the bill," she had said.

The BJP and its allies such as the TDP, JD(U) and Shiv Sena have stoutly defended the bills, saying frequent elections are an obstruction to development programmes and simultaneous polls will boost them by cutting down on election expenditure.