Not an easy task: Congress' Salman Khurshid on 'One Nation, One Election'

Congress leader Salman Khurshid said on Tuesday that it is not an easy task to conduct a 'One Nation One Election' and that the Joint Parliamentary Committee will discuss all issues.

"It is not an easy task. When the parliamentary committee sits, all the issues will be placed before it and will be discussed," Khurshid told ANI.

Left parties have strongly opposed the 'One Nation, One Election' move of the government, for which two bills have been introduced in Lok Sabha, and said it is a direct assault on the federal structure and the rights of state legislatures.

Leaders of the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, Revolutionary Socialist Party and All India Forward Bloc met in the national capital on Sunday and discussed the current political situation.

"The proposed amendments to the Constitution are a direct assault on the federal structure and the rights of State legislatures and the people who elect them. It is a recipe for centralization and truncating the will of the people by arbitrary reduction of the five-year term of legislatures" the Left parties said in a joint statement.

Meanwhile, the bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha, proposes simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies across India.

It has been sent to the Joint Parliamentary Committee to have a deep discussion on the bill.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine the 'One Nation, One Election' Bill will have 21 members from Lok Sabha including Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Manish Tewari, NCP's Supriya Sule, TMC's Kalyan Banerjee and BJP's PP Chaudhary, Bansuri Swaraj and Anurag Singh Thakur.

The 31-member panel will have 10 members from Rajya Sabha.

Opposition members have opposed the amendments, and have argued that the proposed change could disproportionately benefit the ruling party, giving it undue influence over the electoral process in states, and undermining the autonomy of regional parties.