New Delhi: Former President Ram Nath Kovind, who is the head of the high-level committee on simultaneous elections at the Union government, state and municipal levels, has held consultations with prominent lawyers, including former judges.Among those he held consultations with are Justice U.U. Lalit, former Chief Justice of India; Justice Sanjib Banerjee, former chief justice of the Madras high court; as well as Manan Kumar Mishra, chairman of the Bar Council of India.Kovind also met Deepak Pandurang Dhavalikar, president of the Maharastrawadi Gomantak Party, Goa.Most political parties are not in support of the proposition, seeing it as a deeply centralising move.Six national parties, 33 state parties and seven registered unrecognised parties have been formally written to and asked for comments.‘One Nation, One Election’ was termed an “undemocratic” idea “against [the] basic structure of [the] Constitution” by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge earlier this month. He said the panel on this must be dissolved and the idea abandoned for the sake of a “robust democracy”.The fourth meeting of the high-level committee was also held on Saturday (January 27).There is no representative of the opposition in this committee, with Congress leader and MP, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, having refused to participate in the proceedings.In November last year, Kovind said that polls being held concurrently at the Union and state levels is in the national interest. He said it would benefit whichever party was at the Centre, “be it BJP or Congress”.But on November 21, 2023, Chowdhury had called it a “party agenda”.“I am requesting all the political parties to cooperate as this is in the national interest. No political party has got anything to do with it,” Kovind told the media then.By a public notice, the high-level committee had called for suggestions, and said those received by January 15 would be taken up for consideration.Former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is also former leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha; N.K. Singh, former chairman of the 15th Finance Commission; Subhash C. Kashyap, former Lok Sabha secretary general; Sanjay Kothari, former chief vigilance commissioner and Harish Salve, senior advocate attended the meeting on Saturday.As per the government release on the meeting, “a presentation was made before the committee based on the research paper ‘Macroeconomic Impact of Harmonizing Electoral Cycles, Evidences from India’, co-authored by N.K Singh and Prachi Mishra.”“The committee also decided to continue with the conversation process with stakeholders,” it added.The economic argument of ‘cost-saving’ has been critiqued by the Congress already when Kharge wrote in his letter to the committee, saying, “The ECI had estimated the cost of conducting the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with VVPAT machines to be about Rs 3,870 crore … The argument that the cost of conducting elections is extremely high seems baseless.“Considering elections are held once in five years, the expenses make up less than 0.02% of the total Union budget for the preceding five years. When elections are held separately to the state assemblies, the cost of the election is fully borne by the respective states. The expenses for assembly elections may also be a similar percentage of their state budgets.“We feel the people will be willing to consider this small amount as the cost of free and fair elections to uphold democracy.”The CPI(M) has also written to the committee registering its “strong objection” to the manner in which the concept of ‘ONOE’ is being “sought to be imposed”, adding that the consideration of the proposal itself runs against the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the Deccan Herald reported.The Indian Express reports that in 2015, a parliamentary committee compiled a report on simultaneous elections, but the Congress at the time told the committee it was “impractical” and “unworkable”.The Trinamool Congress called the report anti-democratic and unconstitutional, while the CPI and the NCP said it was “not feasible”. The CPI(M) also highlighted “practical problems”, the Express reported.According to the Kovind-led committee’s terms of reference, it is meant to “examine and make recommendations for holding simultaneous elections to the House of the People (Lok Sabha), State Legislative Assemblies, Municipalities and Panchayats, keeping in view the existing framework under the Constitution of India and other statutory provisions.”For this purpose, it is meant to “examine and recommend specific amendments to the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and the rules made thereunder and any other law or rules which would require amendments for the purpose of holding simultaneous elections”.