INDIA bloc cries hoarse over CEC selection, but lacks strategy to secure electoral interests

Also read: Who is Gyanesh Kumar, India’s new Chief Election Commissioner

Huge responsibilities, Oppn fears

Considering how Kumar was practically handpicked for the job by Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah despite the dissent of the third member of the selection panel, Leader of Opposition (Lok Sabha) Rahul Gandhi, Opposition parties fear the poll panel would “essentially function as the election management wing of the BJP”.

That Kumar will remain in office for nearly four years, the longest tenure for a CEC since the late MS Gill who served in the role between December 1996 and June 2001, makes it clear that his steering of the country’s election apparatus would impact almost every political party.

As many as 20 states and Union territories are due for Assembly elections during the tenure of Kumar while he will also preside over preparations for the next Lok Sabha polls before demitting office on January 26, 2029. Further, if the Modi government manages to get its Bill for simultaneous elections enacted by Parliament, some groundwork for implementing this ambitious, but controversial project may also be carried out during Kumar’s tenure even if synchronised polls do not become a reality until 2034.

Rahul’s dissent note

As such, the Opposition, which presently has all its hopes of Kumar’s appointment being quashed and the CEC selection process being made bipartisan pinned on the Supreme Court, has much to be wary about.

On Monday, Rahul’s dissent note at the meeting of the selection panel for the new CEC outlined some the anxieties that his party, the Congress, has over Kumar’s appointment.

Also read: Rahul slams PM Modi, Shah over 'midnight' CEC appointment, shares dissent note

“The most fundamental aspect of an independent Election Commission free from Executive interference is the process of choosing the Election Commissioners and the Chief Election Commissioner,” Rahul’s dissent note said. Recalling that a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had, on March 2, 2023, ordered that the appointment of the CEC and Election Commissioners should be undertaken by a committee comprising the prime minister, leader of opposition and the chief justice of India, the note added, “unfortunately... the Government of India notified a legislation in August 2023 that bypassed the spirit and the letter of the Supreme Court’s order” to reconstitute the selection panel with the PM, a cabinet minister appointed by the PM and the LoP (Lok Sabha) as its members.

Flagrant violation of SC order: Rahul

Calling the reconstitution of the selection committee, later given legal sanctity by the Modi government through a hurriedly passed legislation in Parliament, a “flagrant violation” of the Supreme Court’s order, Rahul noted that the government’s move was challenged before the apex court and was pending a hearing scheduled for February 19, “forty eight hours” before the selection panel met to clear Kumar’s appointment.

However, it is the last paragraph of Rahul’s dissent note that some within the INDIA bloc may have found befuddling for it unwittingly exposed the lack of consultations among its constituents on the now raging row over Kumar’s selection.

“It is the view of the Congress party that the process of choosing the next CEC be deferred until the Supreme Court hearing... it will be both disrespectful and discourteous to the institutions as well as the founding leaders of our nation for this committee to continue with the process of choosing the next CEC when the very composition of this committee and the process is being challenged and soon to be heard” by the Supreme Court, the dissent note stated.

INDIA bloc leaders upset, say ‘not consulted’

Though a cross-section of INDIA bloc leaders The Federal spoke to, agreed with the basic premise of Rahul’s dissent note, they also highlighted, on condition of anonymity, that the Congress, which is the Opposition bloc’s largest party, had held “no consultations with allies till now” on Kumar’s appointment.

“He (Rahul) is a member of the selection panel in his capacity as LoP not as a Congress MP and it would have been appropriate if on such an important matter that will uniformly impact all political parties the collective view of the INDIA bloc was presented at the selection committee’s meeting. As the LoP, it is his job to reach out to leaders of other Opposition parties and convey a collective stand to the government on such critical issues,” a senior MP from the Trinamool Congress, the Congress’s most mercurial ally in the INDIA bloc, told The Federal.

Also read: Chief Rajiv Kumar retiring: Looking back at his tumultuous tenure

Another Opposition MP from a southern state said, “the way the Supreme Court’s judgment was overturned to change the selection committee and how this appointment has now been made deals a fatal blow to the independence of the EC and while I agree with everything Rahul has said in his dissent note, I am also disturbed that neither he nor Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress president and LoP, Rajya Sabha) found it necessary to discuss the issue with other INDIA parties before the meeting; we could have offered some suggestions that to be included in the dissent note... it would have been better if the dissent note conveyed a consensus (among INDIA bloc) against this process instead of being presented as only the view of the Congress party”.

SC decision on case hangs fire

Following how Wednesday’s scheduled hearing in the apex court on the petitions challenging the CEC appointment process panned out, some in the Opposition also fear that the Centre would try to stall proceedings in the case or worse that the top court may, in line with the notoriety it has gained in recent years, ultimately uphold the government’s decision even if it decries the appointment process as a violation of its March 2023 order.

Also read: SC postpones hearing on CEC, EC appointments pleas

On Wednesday (February 19), no headway could be made in the case as Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, sought an adjournment citing his preoccupation before a Constitution Bench. The Justice Surya Kant-headed bench hearing petitions challenging the Centre’s modification of the Supreme Court-ordered selection committee dismissed advocate Prashant Bhushan’s request for not granting an adjournment.

Bhushan had argued that the case was an important one as it directly impacted the way elections will be conducted and that the Centre could have deputed one of its many other law officers to appear before the Bench if Mehta was preoccupied. Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra has also moved an intervention application before the court alleging constitutional infirmities in the 2023 Act through which the Centre had changed the selection process of the CEC and ECs.

Oppn anticipates adverse verdict

INDIA bloc leaders say they would wait for the Supreme Court’s orders in the petitions on the matter but add that “ultimately this is an issue that will have to be opposed politically”. “The Act is an egregious violation of the Supreme Court’s order and we are hopeful that it will be struck down, but we also cannot ignore the pro-executive turn that the court has taken in recent years... even in this case, I suspect that the court may ultimately uphold the Centre’s decision because its directions had, unfortunately, left it to Parliament to enact a law on the selection procedure while directing that the panel consisting the prime minister, leader of Opposition and the chief justice of India will function only until such time that a law in this regard is passed by Parliament,” a senior Congress MP told The Federal.

Watch | EC appointment plea: More leeway for Centre?

For the Opposition, an adverse verdict from the top court is certain to translate into a long-haul battle against the electoral apparatus and the election machinery of Modi’s BJP. Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that the “Modi government has systematically emasculated the Election Commission” to an extent that “it is indisputable now that the EC works for the Prime Minister and the Home Minister”.

Complaints against EC

“We have lost count of the number of times Opposition parties have raised genuine complaints about the partisan conduct of the EC, the deletion of genuine voters and mass addition of fake voters; Maharashtra elections were the most recent example of this but every single complaint we file is dismissed without a fair hearing. How can you expect free and fair elections if the CEC and ECs are virtually handpicked by Modi and Shah, can you expect them to conduct impartial elections,” an MP of Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) said.

Naresh Uttam Patel, the Samajwadi Party’s MP from Fatehpur, feels leaders of the INDIA bloc need to launch a “united and aggressive mass campaign against the “capture of the EC by the BJP if the Supreme Court doesn’t strike down the new appointments (of CEC Gyanesh Kumar and EC Vivek Joshi) of Modi’s handpicked people”. “These people will be in-charge of the Election Commission till 2029 and if this appointment system is not struck down then their successors will also be handpicked by Modi... who will the Opposition go to for justice if the elections are compromised by the EC itself? The courts don’t interfere in EC’s functioning during an election and after an election, candidates only have the option of filing election petitions if they have been wronged and these petitions take forever to be decided in court,” Patel added.

Also read: Election Commission has allowed itself to be pushed into a zone of odium

‘Opposition parties need to be more vigilant’

A Trinamool MP The Federal spoke to said, on condition of anonymity, that it was “pointless outsourcing this fight to the courts” and insisted that Opposition parties needed to be “extremely vigilant at every step of the electoral process; from making of electoral rolls to polling and counting of votes” if they hoped to “stand a chance against the BJP and all the institutions, including the EC, it has captured”. This MP added, “this should be a united fight of the Opposition but unfortunately we are not doing it... the Congress has the biggest stake, and it cries the loudest about electoral malpractice, but it has made no effort to speak to us or other INDIA parties on this issue”.