As blatant as it can get

It is unfortunate that the government has proposed to create a partisan mechanism for the appointment of the members of the Election Commission (EC), wrongly claiming that it was going by a directive of the Supreme Court in the matter. Some months after the court ruled that the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and Election Commissioners should be made on the recommendation of a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the Chief Justice of India (CJI), the government has introduced a bill in the Rajya Sabha that seeks to replace the CJI with a cabinet minister on the selection panel. The bill undermines the court’s judgement in both letter and spirit, just as the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, undermined another judgement which had ruled that the Delhi government, not the central government, had power over services in the state. The bill on the Election Commission will have greater and wider consequences than the bill on Delhi. 

A selection panel with a majority for the government is a government panel, and an EC appointed by that body can only be called a government body, not an independent constitutional body. The presence of the CJI in the panel would have ensured that neither the government nor the Opposition had an upper hand in the selection, and that would have given the appointment greater credibility and acceptability. The EC, which has the power and responsibility to conduct elections, has a vital role in a democracy. It had a good record in the country and globally, but its independence has eroded in recent years. When the credibility and authority of the EC go down, elections, too, lose credibility. When the legitimacy of elections comes under strain, democracy is weakened. The government has contrived to appoint persons close to it as members of the EC till now. Under the proposed law, it can go about the appointment process with total assurance that it can have its way. 

The government has acted in blatant violation of the Supreme Court’s order. The court had said that the EC should be insulated from the executive’s interference. It said that the selection committee with the CJI as a member would hold good till a new law was framed. The government has falsely claimed that the bill is in accordance with the court’s order, while deliberately disregarding its spirit. It is surprising that it can make such a disingenuous argument. It is in line with the trend and policy of weakening institutions and even consciously showing them up as weak. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will ensure that its ruling is not subverted so wantonly.