The recent appointment of Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar, criticised as hasty and opaque, was a necessity arising from a constitutional duty to conduct the national elections on time, the Union government said in the Supreme Court on March 20.
The Centre was rebuffing allegations that it had taken advantage of the two vacancies in the Election Commission to fill the posts with appointees favourable to the present regime.
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A petition by the Association for Democratic Reforms had argued that a new law, the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners (Appointment Conditions of Service and Terms of Office) Act of 2023, aided the government by giving it a dominant role in the appointment process. The 2023 statute had countermanded a previous SC judgment, by replacing the Chief Justice of India with a Cabinet Minister as a member of the high-level selection committee. ADR was represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Cheryl D’Souza.
‘Fundamental fallacy’
The Union government replied that this argument suffered from a “fundamental fallacy” that the presence of a judge in the selection committee — in this case, the CJI — would guarantee the independence of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
“The independence of the Election Commission, or any other organisation or authority, does not arise from and is not attributable to the presence of a judicial member in the selection committee. Likewise, the presence of senior government functionaries on the selection committee cannot in and of itself be a ground to automatically assume bias on behalf of the committee,” the government argued.
The government said that the inclusion of the Chief Justice as a member of the selection panel was just a stop-gap arrangement, meant to last only till the Parliament made a law on EC appointments.
Poll schedule demands
It said that the accusations made against the recent appointments to the ECI were plain “malicious”, pointing out that the two vacancies had to be filled in order to announce the schedule for the Lok Sabha election within time. The Commissioners were appointed on March 14, and took charge on March 15; the election schedule was then announced on March 16.
The Centre said that it would not have been “humanly possible” for Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar to solely steer the “world’s biggest electoral exercise”, with voting scheduled to begin on April 19.
Noting that there were no allegations against Mr. Sandhu or Mr. Kumar, the government claimed that attempts were on to stir a political controversy based on pernicious statements about certain vague and unspecified motives behind the appointments.
‘Democratic, inclusive process’
The sharply-worded affidavit also countered statements made by Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the single largest party in the Opposition, and a member of the high-level selection committee. The Congress leader had claimed that he was kept in the dark about the details of candidates under consideration for the two EC positions. The government said that the profiles of the eligible persons were shared with Mr. Chowdhury on March 13, and explained that the deliberations of the high-level committee were of a collaborative nature, with discussions taking place during the actual meeting itself.
The government said that the 2023 law had introduced a far more democratic, collaborative and inclusive appointment process than what had existed for the previous 73 years. “From 1950 to 2023, the appointment of Election Commissioners was wholly an Executive action,” it reminded the court.
The case is scheduled to come up for detailed hearing before a Bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna on March 22.
