The report will be submitted to the Ministry of Law & Justice and a high level committee. (File Photo)
Sources said that the biggest hurdle with the commission were the Constitutional Amendments needed to facilitate ‘One Nation, One Poll’
The Law Commission of India is set to submit its report on ‘One Nation, One Poll’ (ONOP) next week. The report would be submitted to the Ministry of Law & Justice and a high-level committee.
Confirming the same to CNN-News18, top sources in the Law Commission said the report will be submitted next week.
Sources said that the biggest hurdle with the commission were the Constitutional Amendments needed to facilitate ‘One Nation, One Poll’.
All of the hurdles — however — have now been taken care of, sources said, adding that the report is near completion.
The committee for ONOP, headed by former president Ram Nath Kovind was constituted by the Narendra Modi-led BJP government in September last year.
The idea of the ‘One Nation, One Poll’ or ‘One Nation, One Election’ refers to holding simultaneous elections across the country, which means, polls for Lok Sabha and state assemblies will be held together.
Constituting the committee showed the seriousness on the government’s part to tackle the tricky issue where at least 18 states will be impacted in a major way as their state election is scheduled significantly different from that of the Lok Sabha.
The idea of ‘One Nation, One Polls’ was first proposed in the 1980s where the Election Commission suggested in 1983 that such a system should be developed that the elections to Lok Sabha and state legislative Assemblies could be held simultaneously.
In its 170th report in May 1999, Justice B P Jeevan Reddy-headed Law Commission said that “we must go back to the situation where the elections to Lok Sabha and all the Legislative Assemblies are held at once”.
However, official discussions over the idea began under the Bharatiya Janata Party government.
In 2022, the then Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra said the EC is fully prepared and capable of conducting simultaneous elections. In December the same year, the Law Commission sought the view of stakeholders including political parties, the EC, bureaucrats, academicians and experts on the proposal to hold simultaneous elections in the nation.
However, many of the opposition parties have stood against the idea, including the likes of Shiv Sena (UBT), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Opposing the proposal earlier, Thackeray faction leader Sanjay Raut had said, “The country is already one, is anyone questioning that? We demand fair election, not ‘one nation one election’. This funda of ‘one nation one election’ is being brought to divert the attention from our demand of fair election.”
In fact, just last week, TMC supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that the ‘One Nation, One Election’ idea is not practically feasible going by India’s federal structure.
Hours after she sent a letter to Dr Niten Chandra, secretary of the high-level committee that has called for suggestion for implementation of the idea, Banerjee requested the EC to look into the matter “very very rationally”.
“I do not appreciate it in a practical sense because it is not possible, not acceptable, and not correct from the federal structure point of view. I will request the ECI to see it very sincerely, they have to be very very rational in this case particularly,” Banerjee said.
The ONOP committee had earlier sought views from the public on the issue and had also written to political parties seeking their views and interaction on a “mutually agreed date” on this idea.
