LK Advani lamp dims Modi govt's EC Bill

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, August 11: The legislative proposal to accord executive majority in the panel to pick the Chief Election Commissioner and other members has been moved in the Rajya Sabha and an expeditious nod to the contentious bill is expected soon. While the Opposition has struck a unified stance to decry the bill, the Congress has dug out a letter of former deputy prime minister L K Advani to charge that Narendra Modi-led government continues to ignore demands for bipartisan constitutional body.

Advani in 2012 had written a letter to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ensure that the panel to select members of the Election Commission and its chief should be bipartisan. “There is a rapidly growing opinion in the country which holds that appointments to Constitutional bodies such the Election Commission should be done on a bipartisan basis in order to remove any impression of bias or lack of transparency and fairness,” wrote Advani in the letter, which was tweeted by the chairman of the communication department of the Congress Jairam Ramesh.

The Congress leader stated that the letter can still be found on the website of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He further quoted from the five-judge Constitutional bench judgment from March 23, 2023, which said: “In order to allow independence in the functioning of the Election Commission as a Constitutional body, the office of Chief Election Commissioners as well as the Election Commissioners have to be insulated from the executive interference.”

Advani had written the letter when he was in the Opposition. Now the government is proposing that the panel to pick the chief and members of the Election Commission should consist of the prime minister, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Union Minister. If the bill gains parliamentary nod, the government will have 2:1 majority in the panel. It may be noted that the Opposition has regularly been accusing the BJP of manipulating the elections.

S Y Quraishi, former CEC, in an article in The Indian Express has welcomed the bill with a caveat the decision of the panel should be unanimous. Quraishi has also hailed the bill on the grounds that it for the first time stipulates qualifications of the members and the chief of the EC who should be holding a position or held of the secretary, while being of integrity and also having knowledge of holding elections.