The joint parliamentary committee to scrutinize the One Nation One election bill will have an additional eight members. Now it will have 27 members from the Lok Sabha and 12 from the Rajya Sabha, instead of 21 members from the lower house and 10 from the upper house, as originally declared. The number has increased after former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena UBT leader Uddhav Thackeray and some other parties pointed out that none of their members have been included in the committee.
Despite this, the committee – which the government wants to include all political parties – still does not include members from Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United and Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party. However, the Rajya Sabha members are yet to be named. A member from the Shiv Sena UBT has now been brought along.
The committee can have a maximum of 31 MPs based on each party’s Lok Sabha number. This favors the ruling BJP – the largest party in the lower house with 240 MPs. Congress has 99 MPs.
The new members include Anil Desai (Shivsena UBT) Chhotelal (BJP), Vaijayant Panda (BJP), Shambhavi Chaudhary (LJP Ram Vilas), Sanjay Jaiswal (BJP) and K Radhakrishnan (CPM).
The Constitution (129th Amendment) was introduced in the Lok Sabha earlier this week. The bill will pave the way for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha, state assemblies and local bodies with minimum margin.
But its implementation will require a series of constitutional amendments that can only be made with a two-thirds majority in parliament. Certain provisions may require ratification by the governments of states and union territories.
Given the enormous changes this will entail, the government plans to start a dialogue that will involve all stakeholders and get everyone on board.
The opposition has already voiced its objections, with most parties claiming the bill will undermine the constitution – a claim the government has repeatedly refuted.
The One Nation One Election Bill, introduced on Tuesday by Law Minister Arjun Meghwal in the Lok Sabha, has sparked hours of bitter arguments that are still reverberating. The absence of some BJP members from the House despite a party whip made the opposition enthusiastic to claim that the bill had critics even within the ruling party.
Legal experts have warned that failure to approve the changes will leave the government open to accusations that it is distorting India’s federal structure. Many opposition parties have already claimed that the Center is depriving the states of the right to self-determination, besides violating the Constitution.
Introducing the Bill, Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said: “Laws can be introduced for electoral reforms… this Bill is aligned with the process to facilitate the electoral process, which will be synchronised. It will not harm the Constitution. through this Bill It will not be tampered with with the basic structure of the constitution.
