Commission or omission? no transparency…raises questions on fairness of poll process: Opposition

BARELY days before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are expected to be announced, Election Commissioner Arun Goel resigned Saturday leaving the three-member Election Commission, that already had one vacancy, down to a single office-bearer, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar.

A meeting of the Prime Minister-headed high-level panel to pick Election Commissioners is likely to be held on March 14 or 15 – before the poll schedule is announced – and the Government, sources said, has already sounded out Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the Opposition member in the panel, about the possible dates. Sources said Chowdhury was sounded out before Goel’s resignation.

According to the new law on appointment of CEC and ECs brought last year, a selection committee headed by the Prime Minister and comprising a Union Cabinet Minister to be nominated by the PM and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha or the leader of the single-largest opposition party in the House picks a name.

This came months after the Supreme Court had ruled that a three-member panel headed by the PM and comprising the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India would select the CEC and EC until a new law was enacted by Parliament.

Goel was appointed Election Commissioner in November 2022 and since then has been part of the conduct of at least eight Assembly elections. His tenure at EC was until December 5, 2027, and he would have become Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) after incumbent Kumar retired in February next year.

This isn’t the first instance of the EC being left with only one Election Commissioner. In April 2015, when Nasim Zaidi took over from HS Brahma as the Chief Election Commissioner, he was the sole remaining member in the three-member panel since the government, at that time, had not appointed VS Sampath and HS Brahma’s successor after their retirement.

The EC functioned as a one-man body for almost a month until the government appointed AK Joti as an Election Commissioner in May 2015 and OP Rawat in August 2015.

The calling of a meeting next week suggests that the Centre may fill the two vacancies left after Anup Chandra Pandey’s retirement as Election Commissioner last month and Goel’s resignation on Saturday before the Lok Sabha poll schedule is announced, as the Model Code of Conduct prohibits any big-ticket appointments in the government after the poll announcement.

However, legally, the Lok Sabha polls can be conducted by a one-member EC in case no fresh appointments are made before the Model Code of Conduct kicks in. But this would raise questions of propriety, as all powers of deciding crucial complaints of poll code violations and ensuring a level playing field during the Lok Sabha elections would rest with one person.

According to a Law Ministry notification, Goel’s resignation was accepted by President Droupadi Murmu with effect from Saturday. It was not immediately known why he stepped down.

Calls and messages to Goel and Kumar for comment went unanswered.

But a senior EC official, when contacted by The Indian Express, said he was “unaware” of the circumstances of Goel’s exit. “It was a surprise, we were caught off-guard,” he said.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, Goel was part of the Commission’s recent visit to Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In fact, sources said, Goel was scheduled to travel to Jammu and Kashmir next on March 12 and 13 and his tickets for the review had been booked already.

At the end of the most-recent trip to West Bengal, Goel did not attend the EC’s customary end-of-visit press conference, which was addressed by Kumar. At the start of the press conference, an EC official announced that Goel would not be joining due to health reasons.

Sources said Goel had been unwell since the visit and had not attended the crucial meetings on Friday at the EC’s headquarters, Nirvachan Sadan, with Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and Railway Board Chairperson Jaya Varma Sinha on Friday to review preparations for the elections. He is learned to have intimated his inability to attend shortly before the meeting was to take place at 11am.

Goel’s resignation as Election Commissioner is only the third instance in the poll watchdog’s history. In 1973, Chief Election Commissioner Nagender Singh resigned before completing his term at the poll panel to become a judge at the International Court of Justice.

The second resignation happened recently in August 2020 when Ashok Lavasa quit to join the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as vice-president. Lavasa, like Goel, had more than two years left in his term and would have retired as CEC in October 2022.

Goel, a former IAS officer, took office as Election Commissioner on November 21, 2022. His appointment as EC led to some controversy as he was Union Heavy Industries Secretary when he took voluntary retirement from the IAS on November 18, 2022. A day later he was appointed to the Commission. His appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court by the Association for Democratic Reforms.

Opposition parties expressed concern over Goel’s resignation.

“Election Commission or Election Omission? India now has only one Election Commissioner, even as Lok Sabha elections are to be announced in few days. Why? As I have said earlier, if we do not stop the systematic decimation of our independent institutions, our democracy shall be usurped by dictatorship…ECI will now be among the last Constitutional institutions to fall,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said.

“Since the new process of selecting the Election Commissioners has now effectively given all the power to the ruling party and the PM, why has the new Election Commissioner not appointed even after… completion of latter’s tenure? Modi Government must answer these questions and come out with a reasonable explanation,” he said.

“There is absolutely no transparency in how a constitutional institution like the ECI has been functioning and the manner in which the government pressures them,” senior Congress leader K C Venugopal said.

He recalled during the last general elections in 2019, the then Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa had dissented against a clean chit to the PM for violating the Model Code of Conduct.

“Later, he faced relentless inquiries. This attitude shows the regime is hellbent on destroying democratic traditions. This must be explained, and the ECI must be completely non-partisan at all times,” he said.

Trinamool Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale said: “…before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Modi will now appoint two of the three Election Commissioners after today’s resignation.”

Senior RJD leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj K Jha said such resignations on the eve of announcement of the election schedule raise doubts on whether the poll exercise will be free and fair.