The Leader of Opposition in Punjab Vidhan Sabha and Aam Aadmi Party’s Dirba MLA Harpal Singh Cheema on Monday accused the Chief Election Commissioner for granting a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the alleged serious model code of conduct violations saying, “the act has earned widespread ignominy”.
“The disgraceful act has denigrated the stature of great institution, touted to be a formidable and impartial poll monitor in the country,” said Cheema while accusing the Election Commission of India of being playing as a pawn in the hands of those in the saddle caring two hoots for the established tenets of democracy.
He said that if Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa’s pointing figure to the grant of ‘clean chit’ to Modi, what he described as demolition of established norms, all apex constitutional institutions were under threat.
“The avoidable turmoil within the ECI, which surfaced after Lavasa shot off a letter to CEC Sunil Arora seeking recording of his dissenting note in the matter, is not the first of its kind. On earlier occasions also, glaring instances of meddling in the affairs of the high-end institutions and demolishing their credibility by those at the helm of power could be cited,” he said.
Cheema alleged that the Modi dispensation had demolished the high-end constitutional institutions like the CBI, country’s premier investigating agency, the Supreme Court, the UGC, the Planning Commission, where the government had directly or indirectly done some arm twisting to turn the tide in its favour or settling score with its opponents.
At the same time, he cautioned all right thinking people of the country to come forward to make human chain and raise their voices against the demolition of the country’s premier constitutional and other organizations, touted to be the pillars of democracy, stating that a threat to such pious institutions posed a potential threat to the world’s biggest democracy.