NEW DELHI: The first meeting of the parliamentary panel on ‘One Nation, One Election’ is all set to take place on January 8, PTI news agency reported citing sources.
Last week, the Parliament passed the motion on forming the panel which will now have 39 members to ensure representation of maximum states and the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) will be headed by former law minister P P Chaudhary. The initial motion, to be moved Thursday, mentioned 31 members.
Law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal moved the resolutions in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha separately amid protests by the opposition on parts of home minister Amit Shah’s remarks on B R Ambedkar.
Panel to file report by 1st day of last week of next session
Government sources indicated that the committee’s membership was expanded to 39 to ensure broader state representation and include parties interested in reviewing the two draft bills. The ONOE bills, which establish procedures for concurrent elections, were presented in Lok Sabha on Tuesday following intense discussions.
“Government agreed the matter is very important and relates to reformation of election process, so we agreed to include most of the prominent political parties,” stated Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju to the press. He noted that parliamentary committees can be of any size, citing a previous Centre-state relations panel that had 51 members.
The committee has been asked to submit its report to Lok Sabha by the first day of the last week of the next session.
Who are the members?
Among the 39 members , 16 are from BJP, five from Congress, two each from SP, TMC and DMK, and one each from Shiv Sena, TDP, JD(U), RLD, LJSP (RV), JSP, Shiv Sena (UBT), NCP (SP), CPM, AAP, BJD and YSRCP.
RS members nominated include Ghanshyam Tiwari, Bhubaneshwar Kalita, K Laxman and Kavita Patidar (BJP); Sanjay Kumar Jha (JD(U)); Randeep Singh Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik (Congress); Saket Gokhale (TMC); P Wilson (DMK); Sanjay Singh (AAP); Manas Ranjan Mangaraj (BJD); and V Vijayasai Reddy (YSRCP).
From LS, the members include P P Chaudhary, C M Ramesh, Bansuri Swaraj, Parshottambhai Rupala, Anurag Singh Thakur, Anil Baluni, Vishnu Dayal Ram, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Sambit Patra, Vishnu Datt Sharma, Baijayant Panda and Sanjay Jaiswal (BJP); Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Manish Tewari and Sukhdeo Bhagat (Congress); Dharmendra Yadav (SP), Kalyan Banerjee (TMC), Anil Yeshwant Desai (Shiv Sena-UBT), Supriya Sule (NCP-SP) and Shrikant Eknath Shinde (Shiv Sena).
