President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday supported PM Modi’s idea of conducting simultaneous elections to Parliament and state Assemblies. He said, “all participants of the political spectrum” can brainstorm on how to tackle this issue.” This idea was first given by PM who raised the issue of continuous elections on different platforms hampering governance.
While responding to questions by students during a Teachers’ Day programme, Mukherjee said that India has “proved the mettle” in successfully implementing political democracy and the Election Commission can “put its mind” in changing the Code of Conduct so that it does not disturb the polls.
A special session was held at the school inside the President’s Estate as part of the second edition of his ‘Pranab Sir’s class,’ where he interacted with the students of class XI of the Delhi government-run Dr Rajendra Prasad Sarvodaya Vidyalaya.
Backing the Prime Minister’s idea he said that it would be better to have the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections at the same time and added that the legislation could also see if all other elections could be conducted during the mid-term.
The proposition was first made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who raised the issue of continuous elections on different platforms hampering governance.
Recently, in an interview with CNN News 18, he had said, “Leaders of political parties, when they meet me, emphatically tell me let us please keep elections aside. They tell me why don’t we club assembly elections with Lok Sabha polls. And why don’t we hold local body elections as well during that time, so that the entire election process gets over in a week to 10 days time and then for five years the country runs uninterruptedly.
“All parties will have to unitedly do this. Government alone can’t do this. Election commission has the lead this effort and all parties have to agree on this. I can have my own ideas but I can’t do anything about it. This has to be done democratically,” said Modi.
