slotbet One Nation One Election: BJP MP PP Chaudhary To Chair Mega Parliamentary Panel

Parliament session (Representational Image) Photo: PTI Parliament session (Representational Image) Photo: PTI

BJP member PP Chaudhary was on Friday appointed chairman of the mega joint committee of Parliament set up to examine bills proposing simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.slotbet

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla constituted the committee and appointed Chaudhary, a former Union minister of state for law and justice, as its chairman.

Earlier, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had moved resolutions in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to refer the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to a joint committee of the two Houses.

The government decided to increase the committee's strength from 31 to 39 as more political parties expressed desire to be part of the exercise to examine the two draft legislations that seek to fulfil the BJP's long-cherished promise of simultaneous elections.

Former Union ministers Anurag Thakur, Parshottam Rupala, Manish Tewari and several first-term lawmakers, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Bansuri Swaraj and Sambit Patra, are members of the committee.

The panel has 27 members from the Lok Sabha and 12 from the Rajya Sabha.

The two 'one nation, one election' bills, including one requiring an amendment in the Constitution, laying down the mechanism to hold simultaneous elections, were introduced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday after a fiery debate.

"The government agreed that the matter is very important and it relates to the reformation of the election process of our country, 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 the joint committee of Parliament and pointed out that one parliamentary panel examining centre-state relations had 51 members.

Among the 39 members of the committee, 16 are from the BJP, five from the Congress, two each from the SP, TMC and the DMK, and one each from the Shiv Sena, TDP, JD-U, RLD, LJSP(RV), JSP, Shiv Sena-UBT, NCP-SP, CPI-M, AAP, BJD and YSRCP.

The NDA has 22 members and 15 are from the opposition INDIA bloc.

The BJD and the YSRCP are not members of the ruling or the opposition coalition. The BJD is yet to spell out its stand on simultaneous polls while the YSRCP has backed the move.

Earlier, the government had decided to constitute a 31-member panel but Shiv Sena-UBT member Anil Desai and others had complained of being excluded.

Hockey India on Wednesday (August 28) named an 18-member squad led by ace drag-flicker Harmanpreet Singh for the tournament, with Krishan Bahadur Pathak expectedly being promoted to main goalkeeper duties following PR Sreejesh's international retirement.

Sreejesh announced his retirement after India won a second successive Olympic bronze medal in Paris earlier this month.

As per the resolution moved by Meghwal, the committee has been asked to submit its report to the Lok Sabha by the first day of the last week of the next session.

However, considering the importance of the measure, the committee could get extension in tenure as required.

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Other members of the committee are CM Ramesh, Vishnu Dayal Ram, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Anil Baluni, Vishnu Datt Sharma, Baijayant Panda, Sanjay Jaiswal, Ghanshyam Tiwari, Bhubaneswar Kalita, K Laxman and Kavita Patidar (all BJP), Sukhdeo Bhagat, Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik (all Congress), Dharmendra Yadav and Chhotelal (both SP), Kalyan Banerjee and Saket Gokhale (both TMC) and TM Selvaganapathi and P Wilson (both DMK).

TDP member GM Harish Balayogi, Anil Desai (Shiv Sena-UBT), Supriya Sule (NCP-SP)slotbet, Shrikant Shinde (Shiv Sena), Shambhavi (LJSP-RV), K Radhakrishnan (CPI-M), Chandan Chauhan (RLD), Balashowry Vallabhaneni (JSP), Sanjay Kumar Jha (JD-U), Sanjay Singh (AAP), Manas Ranjan Mangaraj (BJD) and V Vijayasai Reddy (YSRCP) are other members of the committee.