The first meeting of the 39-member parliamentary panel on 'one nation, one election' is set to be held on January 8, setting the tone for nationwide deliberations on the key poll reform measure of the BJP-led NDA government.
Parliamentary sources said that the first meeting of the Joint Committee on bills for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, to be headed by BJP member P P Chaudhary, is expected to be an introductory one in which the officials will brief the committee on the two bills with which to operationalize one of the much long-cherished poll promises of the BJP.
The Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill were introduced in the Lok Sabha last week and referred to the joint committee of Parliament on Friday, the last day of the Winter Session.
This moved the government to increase the strength of the committee from 31 to 39. More political parties expressed interest in the exercise to probe the two draft legislations on simultaneous elections.
Former Union ministers Anurag Thakur, Parshottam Rupala and Manish Tewari and several first-term lawmakers, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Bansuri Swaraj and Sambit Patra, are members of the committee.
The panel has members with 27 from Lok Sabha and 12 members in Rajya Sabha.
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