81% of citizens have ‘affirmed’ simultaneous polls, says Centre
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New Delhi: The high-level committee led by former president Ram Nath Kovind on the ‘One nation One election’ proposal received around 20, 972 responses from the citizens, out of which 81 per cent ‘affirmed’ the idea of holding simultaneous polls, the union law ministry said on Sunday.
The Ministry issued a press statement after the committee held its third meeting here on Sunday. The next meeting will take place on January 27.
In a statement after the meeting, the law ministry stated that the committee had invited suggestions from the public on the proposal from January 5 to January 15.
“...suggestions were also invited from 46 political parties,” it said. “Till date, suggestions have been received from 17 political parties. Suggestions by the Election Commission of India were also noted by the Committee.”
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in a letter on January 17, had written to the panel, asking it to abandon the idea for the sake of a “robust democracy” adding that it was “undemocratic and violative of the basic structure of the Constitution”, The Hindu reported.
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“It is distressing when even common voters feel the consultations of the committee are likely to be a pretence since minds have already been made up,” he wrote. “The Indian National Congress is strongly opposed to the very idea of one nation, one election.”
The Aam Aadmi Party has also opposed the proposal, saying that it will “damage the idea of parliamentary democracy”, the Hindustan Times reported.
“‘One nation, one election’ is unable to deal with hung legislatures and will actively encourage the evil of anti-defection and open buying and selling of MLAs and MPs,” AAP National Secretary Pankaj Gupta wrote in a letter to the committee’s secretary Niten Chandra on January 20.
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on January 12 called the proposal “a design to subvert the basic structure of the Constitution” and said that it will allow “autocracy [in] a democratic garb to enter the national public arena”. “I am against autocracy and, hence, am against your design,” she said, as quoted by NDTV.
All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi told the committee on January 15 that the government had not provided any rationale for the move.
“The focus is on the ‘creation of an appropriate legal and administrative framework for holding simultaneous elections on a permanent basis’,” he wrote. “More importantly, it has not been explored if such fundamental changes to India’s democratic structure are constitutionally permissible in the first place.”
The “one nation, one election” plan was first proposed by the Bhartiya Janata Party in its manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. It involves conducting elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies at the same time.
The proponents of the plan argue that simultaneous polls will help save money and allow the government to focus on development work.
In September, the Centre notified an eight-member high-level committee headed by Kovind to look into the feasibility of implementing the plan.
