CEC Rajiv Kumar, ECs meet President Murmu to submit names of new Lok Sabha members

New Delhi: A day after President Droupadi Murmu dissolved the 17th Lok Sabha following a recommendation from the Union Cabinet, the Election Commission on Thursday submitted the notification containing the names of the newly elected MPs to her.

Murmu signed the order dissolving the Lok Sabha on Wednesday and it read, "In exercise of the powers conferred upon me by Sub–clause (b) of Clause (2) of Article 85 of the Constitution, I hereby dissolve the Seventeenth Lok Sabha."

With the completion of the polls, the Election Commission also lifted the Model Code of Conduct except in the Graduates' and Teachers' constituencies of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana.

Setting stage for the process for the constitution of the new Lok Sabha, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar along with Election Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu called on the President and submitted a copy of the notification issued by the poll body in terms of Section 73 of the Representative of People Act 1951, containing the names of elected members to the House of People, following General Elections to the 18th Lok Sabha.

Kumar and other Election Commissioners and senior officials went to Rajghat to pay tributes to Mahatma Gandhi after successful conduct of the Lok Sabha elections.

On the Rajghat visit, the EC said in a statement referred to Mahatma’s remark that adult suffrage 'enables to satisfy all the reasonable aspirations of all kinds of classes' and said the long queues at polling stations in a festive mood and the determination to decide their future through the ballot were testament to Mahatma’s cherished ideals and India’s civilisational heritage.

"The Commission has, with all sincerity of heart and mind, made its best efforts to make sure that: the right to franchise of the most ordinary Indian is not denied at any cost, and rather it gets vigorously enabled; that the world’s largest electoral contest creates democratic surpluses; and that violence of any form is not allowed to cast even the smallest shadow in the intense activity involving crores of people over our large landscape," it said.