A 39-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) was constituted on Friday to review two bills related to “one nation, one election”.
According to the Lok Sabha Secretariat, BJP MP PP Chaudhary has been appointed as the Chairperson of the JPC. The panel comprises 39 members, with 27 from Lok Sabha and 12 from Rajya Sabha.
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Among the members of the JPC are Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (Congress), Anurag Thakur and Anil Baluni (BJP), as well as other opposition leaders such as Kalyan Banerjee (TMC), and Dharmendra Yadav (Samajwadi Party).
The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth) Amendment Bill, 2024 and The Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024 to give effect to the mechanism of simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and State/Union Territory Assemblies under the vision “one nation, one election” were introduced in Lok Sabha, on December 17 and got referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on December 20.
The first bill is on the simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies and the second is on aligning the elections for Assemblies in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, and Puducherry.
The JPC will focus on reviewing these two bills, which aim to align elections at the national and state levels. The panel’s discussions and recommendations will be the key to shaping the future of India’s electoral process.
The JPC’s primary task will be to examine the feasibility and framework for conducting simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies.
The bills were introduced in the Lok Sabha by Law Minister Arjun Meghwal and have now been referred to the committee for further scrutiny.
The committee will also evaluate proposals for synchronising elections in Union Territories, including Puducherry, Delhi, and Jammu and Kashmir, with the Lok Sabha elections.