New Delhi: The high level committee on One Nation One Election chaired by former President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday will sit for a crucial round of talk with different political parties amid a protest raised by a few parties including Congress and Trinamool Congress (TMC) over conducting simultaneous polls.
Sources said that the meeting will take place around 5 in the evening at Jodhpur house.
West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee who was scheduled to attend the meeting in Delhi cancelled her visit to the national capital showing her important meetings in Kolkata ahead of the State budget on February 8. TMC MP Sudip Bandopadhay will attend the meeting representing TMC.
Sources said that Digvijay Singh will attend the meeting representing Congress.
Earlier, suggestions were invited from 46 political parties out of which 17 parties responded. The six-member committee has already received nearly 21,000 suggestions from the public out of which 81 per cent “acknowledged” the idea of simultaneous polls.
On January 5, the panel had issued a public notice inviting suggestions from citizens for making appropriate changes in the existing legal-administrative framework to enable simultaneous elections in the country.
The Kovind-led committee was constituted in September last year with the idea of conducting simultaneous polls.
Altogether 20,972 responses were received out of which 81 per cent affirmed the idea of simultaneous election, sources said.
As the high-powered committee sought suggestions from the public and political parties, Kovind also initiated consultations with eminent jurists, former chief justices of the Supreme Court and high courts, former chief election commissioners, and heads of Bar Council of India, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, CII among others.
As per terms, the committee is meant to examine and make recommendations for holding simultaneous elections to the House of the People (Lok Sabha), state legislative assemblies, municipalities and panchayats, keeping in view the existing framework under the Constitution and other statutory provisions.
It is worth mentioning that the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice in its 79th Report on ‘Feasibility of Holding Simultaneous Election to the House of People (Lok Sabha) and State Legislative Assemblies’ submitted in December, 2015 has also examined the matter and recommended an alternative and practical method of holding simultaneous elections in two phases.
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