Election Commission says possible to hold polls to Lok Sabha, all state Assemblies together

New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) has indicated to the government that holding of elections to Parliament and all state Legislative Assemblies simultaneously was possible.

As per a report in The Indian Express, the EC has supported the idea of holding the polls together, in a letter to the Union Law Ministry dispatched last month.

It is for the first time that the poll panel has officially said it could conduct Lok Sabha and state polls together.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in favour of holding all polls together to save cost and time.

In March, at a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi had said that the polls to panchayats, urban local bodies, states and Parliament should be held simultaneously.

“In so far as the Election Commission is concerned, the issues involved in holding simultaneous elections are not insurmountable for it. If there is political consensus and will across the board, needless to say that the Commission supports the idea of considering simultaneous elections,” the EC said in its two-page letter, as per the newspaper.

The Law Ministry had sought from the EC its views on the 79th Report of the Department-related Parliamentary Committee on the ‘Feasibility of Holding Simultaneous Elections to the House of People (Lok Sabha) and State Legislative Assemblies’.

The EC letter was in response to that communication.