Karunanidhi backs Advani's plea for collegium

June 05, 2012 06:58 pm | Updated November 16, 2021 11:49 pm IST - Chennai

DMK president M. Karunanidhi, a key ally of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, on Tuesday supported BJP leader L.K. Advani's suggestion that a broad-based collegium be formed to make appointments to constitutional bodies such as the Election Commission.

“I am in agreement with the views of Mr. Advani in his letter to the Prime Minster. You cannot afford to ignore these views,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Advani made out a strong case for a collegium, with the Prime Minister as its chairman and the Chief Justice of India, the Minister for Law and Justice and the Leaders of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha as its members.

Mr. Karunanidhi pointed to Mr. Advani's argument that the present system of Election Commission members being appointed by the President, only on the advice of the Prime Minister, did not inspire confidence in people and that appointments should be done in a bipartisan manner to remove any impression of bias or lack of transparency and fairness. He expressed the hope that the Prime Minister would attach importance to the senior BJP leader's opinion.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.