Azad, Moily to appear before JPC examining ONOE Bills on March 9

New Delhi: Senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and M Veerappa Moily will appear before a Parliamentary panel examining the ‘One Nation One Election’ (ONOE) Bill on Monday.

This will be the 17th meeting of the Joint Committee of Parliament headed by senior BJP MP PP Chaudhary. The multi-party panel is examining the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill, 2024 and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024, providing for simultaneous polls.

Azad, a former Congress leader who floated his own party Democratic Progressive Azad Party, and senior Congress leader Moily will be giving their opinion on the contentious proposal at the meeting scheduled for 3 PM on Monday.

Politicians, jurists, political scientists, constitutional experts and economists have appeared before the panel in the previous meetings. Earlier, senior MPs Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Kapil Sibal have appeared before the panel.

Former Chief Justices BR Gavai, Sanjiv Khanna, DY Chandrachud, UU Lalit, and JS Khehar have also appeared before the panel. Officials of the Ministry of Law and Justice as well as Law Commission functionaries have also provided their inputs.

IMF First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath and Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM) member Sanjeev Sanyal too appeared before the committee.

The 39-member multi-party panel held its first meeting on January 8 last year. The Bills were introduced on 17 December, 2024 in Lok Sabha last year and sent to the JPC for further scrutiny.

The Lok Sabha extended the tenure of the ONOE panel several times.