With Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose refusing to endorse the joining report of newly-appointed State Election Commissioner Rajiva Sinha — for what the Raj Bhavan sources said his apparent failure to discharge his duties impartially —Bengal panchayat elections could be heading for a constitutional crisis, political circles and experts feared.
“I appointed him (Sinha) but he disappointed the people of Bengal,” was what Bose said, holding the State Election Commissioner responsible for “each drop of blood” shed during the violence that erupted before or during the filing of nominations, claiming 8 lives in less than two week’s time.
Bose had twice summoned Sinha, a former State Chief Secretary — known for his proximity to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her family — to the Raj Bhavan apparently to remind him of his constitutional responsibilities during pre-panchayat violence but the latter would not turn up showing preoccupations.
The Governor late on Tuesday returned the SEC’s joining report putting a question mark on his appointment in the midst of the poll process.
The development came hours after the Calcutta High Court reprimanded the SEC, telling him that he should step down if he found it difficult to take orders for the deployment of Central forces in the State for the panchayat polls.
Following the Supreme Court and the HC orders the SEC had earlier requisitioned only 22 companies of Central forces to man more than 61,000 booths leading the Opposition parties to claim he had made mockery of the judicial orders.
The High Court rap on his knuckles came hours later with the Division Bench of Chief Justice TS Sivaganam and Justice Uday Kumar directing him to requisition more CAPF than was used in 2013 panchayat elections when 820 companies were requisitioned.
Sounding unprecedented in the history of State Election Commissions, the legal fraternity and the constitutional experts seemed to be vertically divided on the issue of Sinha’s fate as the chief of the State poll panel.
According to one set of lawyers, though the SEC is a constitutional post and can only be removed through impeachment like the President, Vice President or for that matter Supreme Court and High Court judges, it could trigger an interesting debate in cases where his appointment procedure has not been completed.
“The appointment procedure is complete only when his joining is accepted by his appointing authority … till then you can at the most call him a care-taker or a man in the process of being appointed … it seems Sinha would be in trouble and all his actions may be ultra vires if the matter reaches the judiciary,” said Rabindranath Bhattacharya, a constitutional expert.
