New Delhi, Sep 24 || The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on One Nation, One Election (ONOE), chaired by BJP MP P.P. Chaudhary, on Thursday heard detailed presentations from economists Arvind Panagariya and Surjit Bhalla, both of whom strongly argued in favour of simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies.
Panagariya, Chairman, 16th Finance Commission at the key meeting highlighted that India witnesses 13 rounds of elections in a five-year cycle, with one held on average every 4.5 months.
He recalled that during the 1957 polls, the Constitution framers had allowed premature dissolution of certain Assemblies to hold simultaneous elections with the Lok Sabha.
He argued that if the framers had anticipated today’s continuous cycle of polls, they would likely have preferred an arrangement similar to the one envisaged in the 129th Constitutional Amendment Bill.
Repeated enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), he said, disrupts policymaking, procurement, and reform implementation, while frequent elections delay even constitutional bodies like the Finance Commission.