Recommendations in ‘one nation, one election’ report ‘flawed’: Ex-poll commissioner SY Quraishi

Some recommendations in the “one nation, one election” report cleared by the Union government are flawed, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi told PTI on Friday.

The Union Cabinet had on Wednesday accepted the report by a high-level committee recommending the simultaneous elections plan.

The committee, headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, was set up by the Centre in September 2023 to look into the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections. The report it submitted in March recommended a two-step approach for implementing the plan.

While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has for long been pushing for simultaneous elections, the Opposition parties have criticised the government, saying that the plan undermines federalism.

In the first step, the panel said that simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies could be held initially. In the second step, municipality and panchayat elections could be organised within a hundred days of the elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies.

The panel said there is a need to bring back the cycle of simultaneous elections as had been held during the initial decades after Independence. Holding elections every year “casts a huge burden on the government, businesses, workers, courts, political parties, candidates contesting elections, and civil society at large”, the report said.

Several key recommendations in the report were “flawed”, PTI quoted Quraishi as saying.

The former...

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