Ex-CJI Lalit to appear before 'One Nation One Election' committee

Former chief justice of India U U Lalit will appear before the Parliamentary committee, which is scrutinising two Bills advocating simultaneous elections, on February 25 as the panel begins consulting experts and various stake-holders as part of its mandate, sources said on Monday.

They said former Law Commission of India chairperson Ritu Raj Awasthi, a judicial member of Lokpal, E M Sudarsana Natchiappan, a senior advocate and former Congress MP who had headed in 2015 a Parliamentary committee that favoured simultaneous polls, and IAS officer Niten Chandra, the secretary of the high-level Kovind committee, are also likely to share their views with the panel.

The Parliamentary committee's agenda for the February 25 meeting is briefly listed as “interaction with legal experts”.

The high-level committee headed by former president Ram Nath Kovind was constituted by the Modi government on 'one nation one election' (ONOE) and it had in its voluminous report strongly batted for the concept.

Subsequently, the Union Cabinet accepted the committee's recommendations and the government tabled two Bills, including one seeking to amend the Constitution, in Lok Sabha.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla constituted a 39-member Joint Committee of Parliament headed by BJP MP and former law minister P P Chaudhary.

The Parliamentary committee has so far held two meeting in which it has prepared broad details of its agenda and the list of stake-holders and experts to be consulted.