A week after Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy moved the Madras High Court against Lieutenant Governor (L-G) Kiran Bedi’s insistence on disbursing cash instead of the free distribution of rice to ration card holders, Local Administration Minister A. Namassivayam filed another writ petition against her on the row over appointment of State Election Commissioner (SEC) in the Union Territory.
The Minister’s petition has been listed before a Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha on Friday, for deciding its maintainability. Filing an affidavit in support of his plea, the Minister said the Union Territory had five municipalities and 10 commune panchayats, comprising 98 village panchayats in three blocks. Yet,office of the SEC remained vacant since May 31, 2015.
Since the Government of Puducherry had a constitutional mandate to conduct local body elections in a time bound manner, the council of ministers on May 25, 2019, decided to appoint retired IAS officer T.M. Balakrishnan as the SEC, and forwarded the proposal to the L-G, who, in turn, insisted upon completing the process of delimitation of wards, before embarking upon the appointment of an SEC.
The delimitation process was completed, and the file relating to the appointment of SEC was forwarded to the L-G. This time, she decided to formulate a new scheme and constitute a selection committee for the appointment of SEC. An advertisement was also issued in a local Tamil daily, in July 2019, inviting applications for the post. But the Puducherry Legislative Assembly disapproved of such a course adopted by the L-G.
Consequently, the council of ministers went ahead with the appointment of Mr. Balakrishnan to the post, and he assumed charge on July 23, 2019. When things stood so, the Centre on December 18, 2019, ordered that selection of SEC for the U.T. should be made by calling for applications from across the country. Immediately, the L-G nullified the appointment of Mr. Balakrishnan, and issued an advertisement in all editions of The Hindu, inviting applications.
Contending that the act of the L-G was against the Constitution, and that the SEC should necessarily be appointed only based on the aid and advice of the council of ministers, Mr. Namassivayam accused Ms. Bedi of having tweaked the eligibility conditions in order to get her former advisor Theva Neethi Das appointed as the SEC. The Minister urged the court to declare as illegal the decisions taken by the L-G, as well as the Centre, on the issue of the appointment of SEC.
