Image showing the Parliament in session. For representational purposes.
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New Delhi: In what is seen as an attempt for wider consultation, the number of members in Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on 'One Nation One Election' Bills has been increased from 31 to 39 to add more MPs, including from the Opposition.
The motion to choose the JPC placed before Lok Sabha and later Rajya Sabha by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal on Friday reflected the changes. Lok Sabha will have 27 instead of 21 MPs and Rajya Sabha will have 12 instead of ten in the joint panel likely to be headed by senior BJP MP P P Chaudhary.
Six more names—two from BJP, one from NDA ally LJP (RV) and three from Opposition (one each member from CPI(M), Shiv Sena (UBT) and Samajwadi Party) were added in Lok Sabha to the original motion. The Rajya Sabha motion came only after Lok Sabha cleared the names.
With this, NDA has 22 MPs—BJP, with 16 members and its allies JD(U), TDP, Shiv Sena, LJP (RV), Jana Sena and RLD, with one each. The I.N.D.I.A. bloc has 15—the Congress, with five, Trinamool Congress, DMK and Samajwadi Party with two each, and NCP (SP), AAP CPI(M) and Shiv Sena UBT with one each. Unaligned parties BJD and YSR Congress have one MP each.
Several parties, including CPI(M) Lok Sabha floor leader K Radhakrishnan, had written to Speaker Om Birla seeking inclusion in the panel arguing that their exclusion was not proper.
Congress sources said party’s Lok Sabha Deputy Leader Gaurav Gogoi and Chief Whip Kodikkunnil Suresh later met Speaker Om Birla to urge him to include Muslim League’s E T Mohammed Bashir. The Congress claimed that Bashir may be included as a special invitee but there was no official word.
In the panel with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Bansuri Swaraj, Supriya Sule, the new names from Lok Sabha which included were Baijayant Panda and Sanjay Jaiswal while LJP (RV) has nominated the youngest MP Shambhavi to the panel. CPI(M)'s Radhakrishnan, Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Anil Desai and Samajwadi Party's Chhotelal are the new Lok Sabha members in the panel.
From the Rajya Sabha, the BJP has Ghanshyam Tewari, Bhubaneswar Kalita, K Laxman and Kavita Patidar while the party has also nominated CM Ramesh and Anurag Thakur among others. Besides Priyanka, other Congress MPs in the panel are Manish Tewari and Sukhdeo Bhagat (Lok Sabha) and Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik (Rajya Sabha).
The BJP has also nominated Chaudhary, CM Ramesh, Parshottam Rupala, Anurag Thakur, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Sambit Patra, Vishnu Dayal Sharma, Anil Baluni and Vishnu Dutt Sharma as their members besides Bansuri and the two new members.
The Trinamool has nominated its Lok Sabha Chief Whip Kalyan Banerjee and Saket Gokhale from Rajya Sabha while the DMK has T M Selvaganapathy (LS) and P Wilson (RS). Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh (AAP), V Vijayasai Reddy (YSR Congress), Manas Ranjan Mangaraj (BJD), Sanjay Kumar Jha (JD-U) are also in the panel.
Shiv Sena's Eknath Shinde, TDP's GM Harish Balayogi, RLD's Chandan Chouhan and Jana Sena's Balashowry Vallabaneni have also found space in the panel.
The committee has been given time till the first day of the last week of the Budget Session to submit its report, if no further extension is given. In such a scenario, the report is likely to be submitted by March-end or early April. Earlier, while constituting a JPC on Wakf (Amendment) Bill, the demand for inclusion of several smaller parties was not entertained.
While introducing the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill, 2024 and The Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said that he would soon bring a motion in Lok Sabha to send the two proposed legislations to a JPC for further Parliamentary scrutiny.
The two Bills were introduced in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The Bill to amend the Constitution to enable simultaneous polls was introduced after a 263-198 vote. Opposition claimed that the numbers showed that the government did not have two-third majority to push a Constitution amendment bill. The Opposition’s 198 votes were also above 179, which is needed to defeat such a Bill if all members voted.