New Delhi: The second meeting of the joint parliamentary committee examining two Bills for holding simultaneous elections (One Nation One Election) will be held on January 31, when the procedure and modalities for examination of the Amendment Bills will be discussed.
The panel, which is headed by BJP MP PP Chaudhary, had held its first meeting on January 8, where representatives of the Ministry of Law and Justice (Legislative Department) had briefed the members.
The Constitution (129th amendment) Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill were introduced in Lok Sabha during the recent winter session and immediately referred to the joint parliamentary committee.
A robust exchange of contesting views had marked the first meeting of the panel, with Opposition members criticising the concept as an attack on the basic fabric of the Constitution and federalism, while the BJP MPs had hailed it as reflective of popular opinion.
All MPs were given a trolley carrying over 18,000 pages, including a volume of the report submitted by a high-level committee on One Nation One Election (ONOE), which was led by former President Ram Nath Kovind, and 21 volumes of annexures, besides a soft copy. The two Amendment Bills are based on the recommendations of this panel.
The 39-member Joint parliamentary committee has 27 members from Lok Sabha and 12 from Rajya Sabha. It comprises of members from all major parties, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from the Congress, Sanjay Jha from JD(U), Shiv Sena’s Shrikant Shinde, AAP’s Sanjay Singh, and Kalyan Banerjee and Saket Gokhale from Trinamool Congress.
The government decided to increase the committee’s strength from 31 to 39, as more political parties had expressed their desire to be a part of the exercise to examine the two draft legislations on simultaneous elections.
Former Union Ministers Anurag Thakur, Parshottam Rupala and Manish Tewari and several other lawmakers, including Anil Baluni, Bansuri Swaraj and Sambit Patra, are also members of the committee.