Pranab pitches for simultaneous polls

President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday made a strong pitch for holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies of states. “My government would welcome any decision taken by the Election Commission in this regard after consultations with political parties,” Mukherjee said in his address to Parliament signalling the start of the Budget Session.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often talked of holding simultaneous elections – first during an all-party meeting in March last year and later at a Diwali Milan function at the BJP headquarters here in November. “Frequent elections put on hold development programmes, disrupt normal public life, impact essential services and burden human resource with prolonged periods of election duty,” Mukherjee said in his address to the joint sitting of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. 

The President also called for a debate on funding of elections to eradicate the misuse of money power. Mukherjee had talked about simultaneous polls in his Defence Estates Day Lecture in December as well as his Republic Day address to the nation.