BJP pushes for elections in 11 states to coincide with Lok Sabha polls

While most of the states due to go into elections in 2018 and 2019 are currently under BJP, rival parties like Congress have already said they are against the idea of clubbing state elections with Lok Sabha polls.

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New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is pushing for elections in 11 states to take place along with Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in 2019. These states include Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Mizoram and Bihar.

BJP believes that if state governments and political parties are fine with the prospect of having elections to coincide with Lok Sabha polls, it could be done without bringing about any change in the Constitution.

This could be possible because elections in AP, Odisha and Telangana are likely to match the dates of Lok Sabha elections. Polls in Rajasthan, MP and Chattisgarh - the tenure of the BJP governments here expires in January of 2019 - can be pushed back while election dates in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand (all BJP-ruled states) and Mizoram (Congress government's tenure here expires in December) can be pushed forward to ensure all of these match Lok Sabha election dates.

Elections in Bihar are due towards the end of 2020 and there is murmur that preponing the elections here could suit Nitish Kumar's JD(U) as well.

The prospect of having Governor's rule to serve the objective of common poll dates though has many questioning the legal validity of such a move. While BJP President Amit Shah wrote to Law Commission on Monday and expressed that his party is in favour of common polling dates, opposition parties like Congress and Trinamool Congress are vehemently against the idea. This means bringing about a Constitutional Amendment could prove to be an uphill task.