The first meeting regarding “One Nation & One Election" will be held on September 23, said former President, Committee head, Ramnath Kovind in Bhubaneswar.
Kovind reached Bhubaneswar at 1 pm on Saturday. He will grace the convocation of ASBM University, Bhubaneswar.
The first official meeting of the ‘One Nation, One Election’ committee took place at 3 pm on September 6 at the residence of former President Ram Nath Kovind, who heads the committee on simultaneous polls, in Delhi. The meeting was attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal.
According to news agency PTI sources, the nearly hour-long meeting was described as a “courtesy call".
Efforts are on to hold the first meeting of the high-level committee in the coming days and a venue is being finalised. The meetings in the future could also be held in hybrid mode, they said.
The government formed a committee over One Nation, One Election to investigate the feasibility of implementing the concept of ‘one nation, one election’. The development came amid the government calling a special session of Parliament between September 18 and 22.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, former Rajya Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP) Ghulam Nabi Azad, jurist Harish Salve, ex-CVC Sanjay Kothari, ex-chairman of Finance Commission NK Singh and former secretary general of Lok Sabha Subhash C Kashyap have been appointed are other members of the committee.
The committee will engage with state stakeholders, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate that the bill will be introduced during this session. The committee plans to seek both legal and political opinions, and it is anticipated that two retired judges will also be part of the committee. This is because the proposed changes involve a constitutional amendment.
The government’s move suggested that it might be contemplating advancing some of these elections to coincide with the Lok Sabha polls. Kovind will explore the feasibility of the exercise and the mechanism to see as to how the country can go back to having simultaneous Lok Sabha and state assembly polls.