NEW DELHI: The decks for a parliamentary scrutiny of the twin bills to roll out the one nation, one election (ONOE) project have been cleared with the constitution of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) which will be headed by former law minister P P Chaudhary.
Just before being adjourned sine die Friday, Parliament passed the motion on formation of the panel which will now have 39 members to ensure representation of maximum states. The initial motion, to be moved Thursday, mentioned 31 members.
Chaudhary is a third-time MP from Pali in Rajasthan. A senior advocate in Supreme Court with a legal experience of over 45 years with specialisation in constitutional matters, he had headed the parliamentary panel on data privacy.
NDA has 22 members and 15 are from the opposition. One MP each of BJD and YSRCP, which are not members of the ruling or opposition blocs, is also on the panel. BJD is yet to spell out its stand on simultaneous polls while YSRCP has backed the move.
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.
ONOE panel to file report by 1st day of last week of next session
Sources said govt decided to increase committee’s strength to 39 to cover more states and accommodate parties which wished to be part of the exercise to examine the two draft legislations. The two ONOE bills lay down mechanism to hold simultaneous polls and were introduced in LS Tuesday after a fiery debate.
“Govt agreed the matter is very important and relates to reformation of election process , so we agreed to include most of the prominent political parties,” parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju told reporters. He said there was no limit on the size of JPC and pointed out that one parliamentary panel examining Centre-state relations had 51 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.
The committee has been asked to submit its report to LS by the first day of the last week of the next session.
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).