The Congress on Friday strongly opposed the “undemocratic” idea of holding simultaneous elections in the country and said it goes against the guarantees of federalism and the basic structure of the Constitution.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge also demanded that the idea be abandoned and the high-powered committee formed to study it be dissolved.
In a letter to the secretary of the committee on one nation, one election, he requested former president Ram Nath Kovind, who heads the panel, “not to allow his persona and the office of the former president of India to be abused by the Union government to subvert the constitution and parliamentary democracy in this country”. “The Indian National Congress is strongly opposed to the very idea of ‘One Nation, One Election’. For the sake of maintaining a thriving and a robust democracy, it is imperative that the entire idea must be abandoned and the high-powered committee dissolved,” Kharge said in his letter to Niten Chandra, the secretary of the committee.