A meeting of the Election Commission of India (ECI) with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) last month that was reported on Friday caused the Opposition to cry foul and question the credibility of the poll body.
Congress MP Manish Tewari moved an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha on the matter. He wrote that the summoning of the ECI for a meeting with the principal secretary to the Prime Minister raised “serious questions of propriety and autonomy of the Election Commission”.
Congress general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a tweet: “This is atrocious. How can the PMO summon an independent Constitutional authority? One mandated to conduct free and fair elections? Worse how could the EC be so servile & attend?? over ECs neutrality & fairness. (sic)”
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury said the “cat was out of the bag”. “...What was whispered till now is a fact. PMO summoning ECI was unheard of in independent India. Treating EC as a subservient tool is yet another low in Modi Govt’s record of destroying every institution. (sic),” he said in a tweet.
Former top election officials, too, raised concerns over the ECI meeting with the PMO official in an informal meeting after declining the initial meeting they were asked to attend by the Law Ministry.
O.P. Rawat, who served as the CEC (Chief Election Commissioner) in 2018, said that in the past, ministries did not issue such notices to ECI to attend meetings. Rather officials would seek time to meet the commission at the ECI headquarters on various issues. For instance, the Law Secretary would regularly visit and the Finance Secretary met the ECI when the electoral bond scheme was being introduced.
‘Not proper to attend meeting’
“The ECI did the right thing by reprimanding the officer. It was proper not to attend the meeting. The decision to attend the informal meeting afterwards appears to be incongruous….It will definitely affect the image of the ECI,” said Mr. Rawat.
Another former CEC, S.Y. Quraishi, said such a meeting had never happened as far as he remembered. “It is outrageous. It is very cheeky and presumptuous of the official to call the full commission, even if the subject matter is of the election commission’s interest….We don’t know what was discussed. Was it election dates?” he stated.
Not only was neutrality of the ECI, a constitutional body, important, “neutrality must be seen to be practised.”
CEC Sushil Chandra did not respond to a request for comment.
