Chennai: The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievance, Law and Order will submit its report to Parliament by November this year on the proposal to conduct simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and the state Assemblies. Briefing the media on Tuesday, the Parliamentary Standing Committee chairman E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan said, “If we combine elections scheduled in proximity of each other, 13 assemblies can be combined together.”
Elections to Parliament and 13 state Assemblies can be combined in one phase. During the mid-term of Parliament, rest of state Assemblies can be combined. This would do away with the need to have Assembly elections every year. Instead, there will be two phases of elections across India initially, he said.Most political parties were in agreement to this model, he said adding that further consultations were in the pipeline with politicians, thinkers and activists in Delhi before the final report is ready for submission in November this year.
The first four Lok Sabha elections (1952,1957, 1962 and 1967) had simultaneous polls with state Assemblies. Thereafter, elections were held in different years and months for two key reasons. One – the dissolution of Assemblies due to law and order problems and losing majority.The other reason being instability of the government or coalition.
These two issues have been addressed by the Supreme Court judgment in S. R Bommai’s case that there should not be indiscriminate President’s rule unless it is a rarest of rare cases or a clear proof of law and order problem or instability in the government, he said.
“We are matured enough to have simultaneous poll now. Some assemblies may have to sacrifice and lose their full term. Some may lose a year or six months or three months. As an interim arrangement, one Parliament and five Assembly elections have already been held,” he said.
Panel to submit report on bill for disposal of commercial cases
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice headed by E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan will submit its report on the proposed bill for the disposal of high-value commercial disputes by July or August this year. The bill referred to the panel by Parliament was about setting up commercial courts to exclusively try disputes having value of '1 crore and above.
The Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Bill, 2015, is before Parliament. The bill will deal with cases which are categorized under 22 items of commercial disputes and have value of Rs 1 crore and above. These cases will be first initiated on the designated district commercial courts and there will be one appeal only to the Division Bench of the High Court, Natchiappan said.
“This is one of the expectations of investors from other countries and India, which is an attractive destinations for investment when you compare with China,” he said. China does not have an established judicial disputes resolution system but India has 200 years experience in it, he said. He said the committee held discussions with various advocates associations and officials from the Registrar General office and obtained their views for its report to be submitted to the Parliament by July or August.
