Tenure of JPC examining Bills seeking simultaneous polls extended till end of Monsoon session

The panel had held its first meeting on January 8 last year and so far, has met on 17 occasions. The panel got its fourth extension during the Winter Session last year.

New Delhi: Lok Sabha on Wednesday once again extended the tenure of the Joint Committee of Parliament examining the Bills seeking to introduce simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, this time till the last week of Monsoon Session, which is usually held in July-August.

Senior BJP MP PP Chaudhary, the Chairman of the committee moved the motion seeking extension of the tenure of the 39-member multi-party panel till the first day of the last week of Monsoon Session and it was adopted by a voice vote.

The Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill, 2024, and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024, which had attracted criticism from the Opposition, were introduced on 17 December, 2024 in Lok Sabha and sent further Parliamentary scrutiny. 

The panel got its fourth extension during the Winter Session last year.

The panel had held its first meeting on January 8 last year and so far, has met on 17 occasions.

Former Chief Justices BR Gavai, Sanjiv Khanna, DY Chandrachud, UU Lalit,  and JS Khehar, senior lawyer-MPs Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi, senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and M Veerappa Moily, IMF First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath and Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM) member Sanjeev Sanyal among others have appeared before the panel.

The extension came on a day the EAC-PM released a working paper 'Estimating Reduction in Polling Personnel Deployment Under Simultaneous Elections' by Sanyal and EAC-PM Joint Director Satvik Dev, who argued that 'One Nation, One Election' (ONOE) is estimated to reduce deployment of polling personnel by 28% or 26 lakh polling personnel.

Sanyal and Dev also argued that simultaneous polls could save around 1.4 crore personnel-days of polling personnel over a five-year election cycle, taking into account that two days each are required for their training and deployment. 

"Since most polling personnel are teachers, and most polling stations are located in schools, a reduction of this scale in teaching days lost due to elections could have a significant impact on learning outcomes," they said.  

Citing an Election Commission estimate, they said nine polling personnel -- four for Assembly and five for Lok Sabha -- are required for conducting separate polls but it will reduce to six if the polls are conducted simultaneously. Though this comes to 33 per cent, the working paper said the actual reduction could be 28 per cent due to premature dissolutions. 

The working paper noted that the EC itself estimates that security deployment will be higher for a simultaneous election compared to a Lok Sabha election on account of bigger security requirements for maintenance of general law and order during election periods, securing vulnerable pockets/hamlets, providing security cover to VVIPs, and providing security to EVM and VVPAT strong rooms. 

At the same time under simultaneous elections, it said, separate deployment of security personnel for Assembly elections will reduce but  it will be difficult to come up with a single point estimate of the impact of simultaneous elections on deployment of security personnel.

"No reduction is estimated for counting personnel since the process of counting of State Assembly and Lok Sabha votes, even in a simultaneous election, is mutually exclusive with separate personnel deployed for both," the working paper said.