When differences within ECI had tumbled out in open in past
The differences between the election commissioners over the ongoing SIR have brought to the fore various past cases where members of the poll authority had divergent views which came out in the open.
In 2009, then chief election commissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswami sought the removal of fellow commissioner late Navin Chawla over alleged partisan conduct. The Government rejected the recommendation, and Chawla went on to become CEC.
An even sharper clash preceded this one. Between 1993 and 1995, then CEC late TN Seshan went to court to challenge the creation of a multi-member Commission, leading to a legal battle with fellow commissioners MS Gill and GVG Krishnamurthy.
After his term as CEC ended, Gill joined the Congress and was made a Union Minister.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, then election commissioner Ashok Lavasa had given dissent notes on clean chits to top BJP leaders over alleged model code violations.
He had demanded that the dissent notes be included on record in the final published order. But noting that executive orders of the ECI do not provide for attaching dissent notes to final decisions, the Commission, then headed by Sunil Arora, turned down his demand.
Lavasa later resigned from ECI to join the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
In May 2021, then election commissioner Rajiv Kumar, who later became the CEC, attempted to file a separate affidavit with the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court, defending the poll body against a court observation.
The Madras High Court made the observations, saying the Election Commission was “singularly responsible” for the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic because of its handling of Assembly elections.
Then CEC Sushil Chandra opposed the affidavit Kumar wanted to file. Their differences came out in the open and made headlines.
The poll authority is again under fire after incumbent Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi red-flagged a variety of issues, including the deletion of voters in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list, and raised objections to the decision-making process 14 times in the past few months. In response, the Election Commission said differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution, and that all its orders “are an outcome of the unanimous decisions of the full Commission in the past one year”.
The opposition parties, which have been critical of the ECI over the SIR of electoral rolls, latched on to the issue to demand immediate impeachment proceedings against CEC Gyanesh Kumar in Parliament.
