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Informist, Tuesday, Sep 17, 2024

 

NEW DELHI – The Bharatiya Janata Party's flagship plan of 'One Nation, One Election' will be implemented in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's current term itself, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said today. "The government plans to implement 'One Nation, One Election' within the tenure of this government," he said at a press conference on the completion of 100 days of the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government's third term. 

 

In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Modi made a case for 'One Nation, One Election', emphasising that frequent elections were slowing down the country's development. "Frequent elections create stagnation in the nation. Today, every scheme and initiative seems to be influenced by election cycles, and every action is coloured by political considerations," Modi said last month.

 

'One Nation, One Election' was a key promise made in the BJP's manifesto for the General Elections held earlier this year. The elections saw the BJP-led NDA government return to power, albeit with a sharply reduced majority. The BJP secured 240 seats compared to 303 in 2019, while the tally of the ruling coalition fell to 292 seats from 353 seats in the previous election. The majority mark is 272 seats.

 

The government had set up a committee in September last year under former president Ram Nath Kovind to examine the matter of simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha, state legislative Assemblies and local bodies. The panel had recommended holding simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies as the first step, followed by local body elections within 100 days as the second step. The Kovind panel had not specified any period for rolling out the plan.

 

It also proposed the creation of an "Implementation Group" to look into execution of its recommendations. The panel recommended as many as 18 constitutional amendments, most of which will not need to be ratified by the state Assemblies.

 

Besides Kovind, the committee included Home Minister Shah, former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, 15th Finance Commission Chairman N.K. Singh, former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash C. Kashyap, and former chief vigilance commissioner Sanjay Kothari. Law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal was a special invitee and Law Secretary Niten Chandra was the committee's secretary.

 

The Opposition has been critical of 'One Nation, One Election' and has sought dissolution of the plan. "There is no place for the concept of simultaneous elections in a country that has adopted a Parliamentary system of government. Such forms of simultaneous elections that are being floated by the government go against the guarantees of federalism contained in the Constitution," Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge had said in a letter to the committee's secretary Chandra in January.  End

 

Reported by Priyasmita Dutta

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

 

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