News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 17th December 2024
According to the list of business for the day, Union Minister for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal will table Bills to enable simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha, state and union territory assemblies, in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. On Thursday, the Cabinet approved the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Amendment) Bill, 2024, and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment Bill), 2024, which were distributed to MPs on Friday evening. The bills may be sent to a joint parliamentary committee for additional consideration.
The Bills were developed based on the suggestions of the high-level committee directed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, who was constituted by the Law Ministry on September 2, 2023 to suggest ways and amendments to enable simultaneous elections.
The Kovind panel received opinions from 47 parties, with 32 supporting the plan and 15 opposing it. Telugu Desam Party, an NDA partner that did not provide an input to the panel, has told The Indian Express that it supports the move in principle. All 32 parties who backed the proposal before the panel were either BJP allies or sympathetic to the party. Since then, the BJD has turned on the BJP. Of the 15 who rejected the motion, five are parties other than the NDA that are in power in states, including the Congress.Following the Lok Sabha election, the parties that backed simultaneous elections before the Kovind panel account for 271 MPs in the Lok Sabha.
The NDA, which includes the TDP and other parties that did not support or oppose simultaneous elections, has 293 members in the Lok Sabha. If the Lok Sabha is fully assembled, the government will need 362 votes, or the backing of two-thirds of those present and voting. Only if 439 MPs are present and voting in the Lok Sabha on the vote day, and the remaining more than 100 abstain, would the Bill receive a two-thirds majority with the NDA’s strength of 293, unless the government can persuade non-NDA parties to support it. This implies that unless it can gain considerable support from opposition parties, the constitutional change Bill may fail to pass the Lower House.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will dedicate a Rs 40,000 crore project to link 11 rivers in Rajasthan, which is expected to create the state a water surplus, Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Patil said on Sunday. The project is anticipated to relieve Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan’s water crises. It will fulfill a variety of functions, including drinking water supply, agriculture, and industrial water needs. Modi will also speak at a function in Jaipur’s Dadiya on Tuesday. The function would be attended by BJP workers as well as beneficiaries of several Rajasthan government projects.
The West Bengal Joint Platform of Doctors (WBJPD) plans to hold a sit-in rally in Kolkata on Tuesday to protest the CBI probe into the R G Kar hospital rape and murder case, in which two major suspects were given bail. The WBJPD’s intended demonstration, which includes five associations, would go until December 26, according to an office-bearer. On Friday, a judge granted bail to Sandip Ghosh, former principal of R G Kar Medical College, and Abhijit Mondal, former officer-in-charge of Tala police station, in the rape-murder case. They were granted bail after the CBI “failed” to file a charge sheet within the 90-day deadline.
On Tuesday, the All India Congress Committee’s Maharashtra in-charge, Ramesh Chennithala, will hold meetings of the party’s freshly elected MLAs and MLCs, as well as Assembly poll candidates, in Nagpur. The Congress’s poor result in the November 20 Assembly elections will be highlighted during the sessions. In its poorest result ever in Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Congress won only 16 of the 101 seats it contested.Meanwhile, Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil said on Monday that he will begin another indefinite fast to lobby for the Maratha community’s demands, including OBC quota in jobs and education, and that the date will be announced on Tuesday.
