Toeing the line of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a high-powered ministerial committee has recommended unified elections of lok Sabha, Assembly, Panchayat and Urban local Bodies by 2029 to save money and minimise development obstructions. The seven-member committee, led by Health minister Sidharthanath Singh, submitted a report to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with the recommendation that it be implemented ‘as it is feasible’. The committee recommended that there should be unified electoral rolls and the entire process should be completed in two phases. Singh said that to start with election of lok Sabha and legislative Assemblies be held simultaneously and later local Bodies be incorporated. He felt that thus the proposal could be made operational by 2029.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had set up the committee on a suggestion from the Centre in March and rthe committee was asked toi submit its report in three months. The Election Commission (EC) too has started the process of searching ways to hold Parliament and Assembly elections together. The 23-page report echoes the suggestions of law Commission and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had advocated simultaneous elections. “If it is accepted by the Centre, it will follow the principle of ‘one nation, one election and common electoral rolls’,” Singh said.
The suggestion for having a unified voters’ list was raised previously because rolls for lok Sabha and local Bodies elections are separate. In the last Urban local Bodies elections, voters complained about their names missing from the rolls. They claimed that they had voted in Assembly polls but their names were missing from Urban local Bodies poll rolls. The committee recommended that Aadhaar numbers be linked with the names of voters to eliminate chances of duplication. Singh said that linking of voters list with Aadhar would remove anomalies of doubling of names besides, youths attaining the age of 18 years, will automatically get enrolled in the electoral rolls. The report said that holding simultaneous polls would involve synchronising the election cycles of various legislative Assemblies with lok Sabha polls and making this a permanent feature. “If the term of Assemblies are to coincide with that of lok Sabha, one would have to curtail the period of some Assemblies and extend taht of others, to start with. For this, there has to be a reference date,” the report said. It said that the logical date would be midway point between June 4, 2019 and June 3, 2024, which would fall between November-December 2021. The committee noted that till 1967, elections to lok Sabha and state Assemblies were held together. It was only due to contemporary political events that the synchronous poll cycle was broken and as time progressed the conduct of elections became more and more disjointed, it said. Singh said that UP government would forward its report to the Centre as the proposal requires amendments to Constitution.