While the entire nation was glued to the headlines of the results of the assembly polls of five states, the Election Commissioner of India has turned heads through his remark that has echoed Prime Minister Modi's mind and mantra of 'One nation'.

In an interview with ANI, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra has said that the nodal election body is ready for One Nation, One Election. Aligning to what has been slammed by the opposition parties and activists, Chandra claimed that the One Nation One Election is a good suggestion.

He said, "According to the Constitution, all the elections should be held simultaneously. The parliament elections that are held since Independence, three of them are simultaneous elections. It is only later that sometimes the Assembly was dissolved, sometimes parliament, which disturbed the schedule."

"One Nation One Election is a good suggestion but this needs a change in the constitution. An assembly which will not be able to complete the 5-year term in the assembly will have to think about whether we can abolish it under the constitution or we need to increase the tenure of parliament for simultaneous election in the country", he added.

He further said that it is to be decided in Parliament but the Election Commission is fully prepared and is capable of holding all the elections simultaneously. Commenting about the assembly polls in five states, Chandra said that curbing the roadshows and rallies was a tough decision. He said, "When this election process started from the month of September, October, no one knew that the third wave of Coronavirus was to come. But as we approached December, we felt that the Omicron was spreading." 

He stated, "The Commission has discussed with the Union Health Secretary and talked to the Chief Secretary of the state and the state health secretary. We found that the Covid is spreading." He said, "In some of the states, not everyone was vaccinated, so the commission decided that there will be no physical rally in the first week of the beginning and there will be no padayatra, only a digital rally and at the same time, you can do door-to-door campaigning, which has also restricted numbers."  "The basic concept of the body is that the vote should be safe and the voter should also be safe", he added.