Amid reports that the Centre may postpone Assembly elections in some States to hold the polls along with those to the Lok Sabha in 2019, the Congress on Tuesday dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to dissolve the Lok Sabha and have an early election along with the Assembly polls in those States.
The Congress said it would move court if any attempt was made to change the schedule of the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, where they due in November and December.
Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot said postponing elections to these Assemblies was “not possible” unless the Constitution was amended.
“There is only one way of holding simultaneous elections. Modi ji should have mercy on all of us and dissolve the Lok Sabha to hold polls along with the Assembly elections in the four States,” Mr. Gehlot told a press conference.
“Their approach from day one has been wrong. If they were serious, they would have called all political parties for a meeting, discussed ways and means of implementing a proposal and debated solutions for cases where the Lok Sabha or Assemblies are dissolved before their term. But the government did not do any such thing,” he said, adding that the Congress was ready for early polls.
“We have a parliamentary system of democracy where, even though tenures are specified, governments can fall at any point of time. There will never be one date for all States to have a common election,”said Congress legal cell head Vivek Tankha.
The Congress also complained to the Election Commission about an exponential growth in the voters list in Rajasthan. As many as 42 lakh duplicate voters have been noticed going by the parameter of having similar names, relatives and gender.
“There are 91,000 voters having the same voter ID card number,” alleged Mr. Tankha, who now plans to go to the Supreme Court.
