No need to amend Constitution, changing RP Act adequate for simultaneous polls: Ex minister to panel

New Delhi | Former Union minister and senior advocate E M S Natchiappan has told a parliamentary committee that amending the Constitution is not required for holding simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly polls and that changes in the Representation of People Act can legally suffice for its implementation, sources said.

Natchiappan, a former Congress MP who headed the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice which had favoured simultaneous polls, also told the committee scrutinising the 'one nation, one election' bill that the government should consider implementing the proposal in its current term as leaving its notification to the next Lok Sabha will be legally suspect.

He appeared before the Joint Committee of Parliament, headed by BJP's P P Chaudhary, on Friday, and questioned some provisions of the constitution amendment bill proposing simultaneous elections.

He cited the doctrine of temporal limits on legislative mandate, sources said, to object to the proposed law's provision that says once the bill is passed "the President may by a public notification issued on the date of the first sitting of the House of the People after a general election, bring into force the provision of this article, and that date of the notification shall be called the appointed date."

A newly elected Lok Sabha represents the latest expression of people's will and cannot be asked to follow the direction of the previous House, he is believed to have argued in his opinion submitted to the committee, according to the sources.

The Constitution does not speak about holding simultaneous or staggered elections, so there is no need to amend it, he is learnt to have said.

In his opinion, he added, the Constitution has mandated the Election Commission to fulfil all duties related to polls.

Natchiappan claimed that amendments in Sections 14 and 15 of the Representation of People's Act to empower the Election Commission to notify an election not only within the six month prior to the date of the dissolution of a legislator, as it is currently allowed, but also within the next few months of the dissolution will help synchronise the date of assembly and Lok Sabha polls.

Simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly elections cannot be achieved in one go, but in a few electoral cycles by this process, he said.

The sources said the senior advocate in his presentation also highlighted that the BJP and its allies are in power in nearly two-thirds of the assemblies.

He suggested that the alliance, which governs the country as well, can make a big leap towards implementing simultaneous elections by agreeing to hold elections to the assemblies along with the Lok Sabha.

The sources said the standing committee that the former parliamentarian headed had made some of these recommendations as well in its report submitted in December 2015.

Former chief justices of India, D Y Chandrachud and J S Khehar, had also appeared before the committee on Friday.

They flagged certain provisions of the constitutional amendment bill for simultaneous elections, including powers it vests with the Election Commission, but rejected the suggestion that the idea falls foul of the Constitution, sources said.

Khehar is the third ex-CJI to question the wide leeway the bill confers on the poll body under its 82A(5) Section in deciding on holding the election of an assembly after Ranjan Gogoi and Chandrachud.