28 Nov 2022 Election Commission
Significance for Prelims: Appointment of Chief Election Commissioner(CEC), Election Commissioners(EC)
Significance for Mains: Issues associated with the appointment of the Election Commission.
News: Supreme Court questions the’ lightning speed’ of appointments of new Election Commissioner Shri Arun Goel.
Appointment of Chief Election Commissioner(CEC), Election Commissioners(EC):
- President of India appoints the Chief Election Commissioner(CEC) and Election Commissioners (EC) for six years tenure or up to the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier.
- Status and Perks of CECs and ECs: Status, salary and perks of CECs and ECs are similar to the judges of the Supreme Court of India.
- Source of the authority of the Election Commission of India is the Indian Constitution. Under Article 324, the powers of “superintendence, direction and control of elections” is to be vested in an Election Commission.
Size of the Election Commission: The size of the Election Commission is not fixed by the Indian Constitution.
- According to Article 324(2) “the Election Commission shall consist of the Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners if any, as the President may from time to time fix”.
- In the beginning, Chief Election Commissioner was the only member of the Indian Election Commission. In 1989, the Congress government made the Election Commission a multi-member body by appointing two more Election Commissioners.
- EC again became a single-member body after the National Front government of Prime Minister VP Singh.
- Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao(on October 1, 1993) promulgated an ordinance for the appointment of two more Election Commissioners. Since then EC had three members.
- All three ECs have equal say in the decision-making of the Commission according to The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Conditions of Service) Amendment Act, 1993.
Procedure for appointments of Election Commission according to Attorney General R Venkataramani:
- Preparation of a list of serving and retired officials in the position of Secretaries.
- On the basis of this list, a panel of names is prepared for the consideration of the Prime Minister and President.
- The PM recommends one name to the President after considering the panel.
- Then a note recommendation is submitted to the President of India.
Issues associated with the appointment of the Election Commission:
- Politicisation of Institution: Incidents from history show that there were attempts made to compromise the independence of the Election Commission. For Example, the Congress government in 1989 made the Election Commission a multi-member body just before the commencement of the Ninth General Election. This was seen as an attempt to compromise the independence of CEC RVS Peri Sastri.
- Impact of strong and ‘dominant Executive’ on ECI: The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) after 2014 created a strong Executive which weakened the ECI. Example: ECI’s inaction against the current Electoral Bonds scheme.
- Political interferences from various regimes: ECI is facing it difficult to endure the current regime of a strong executive.
- Several unaddressed concerns, such as specifying the maximum number of commissioners in the Election Commission. What are the CEC’s powers in relation to other commissioners?
- Issues related to the Independence of other commissioners as other commissioners do not enjoy the same security of tenure and constitutional status of the CEC.
- Concerns over the partisanship of the EC: Concerns about the Commission’s political neutrality are growing as the Election Commission had delivered many questionable judgements in the past.
Conclusion: Election Commission stood the test of time even after facing so much turbulence. Since Independence, It was able to successfully conduct regular elections. According to former Chief Election Commissioner of India, Mr N. Gopalaswami accusing ECI of being partisan has become a ‘favourite poll pass time.
Prelims (2019):
With reference to the Constitution of India, prohibitions or limitations or provisions contained in ordinary laws cannot act as prohibitions or limitations on the constitutional powers under Article 142. It could mean which one of the following?
(a) The decisions taken by the Election Commission of India while discharging its duties cannot be challenged in any court of law.
(b) The Supreme Court of India is not constrained in the exercise of its powers by laws made by the Parliament.
(c) In the event of grave financial crisis in the country, the President of India can declare Financial Emergency without the counsel from the Cabinet.
(d) State Legislatures cannot make laws on certain matters without the concurrence of Union
Legislature.
Mains Question(2018):
Q. In the light of recent controversy regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), what are the challenges before the Election Commission of India to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India?
Source: The Indian Express; The Times of India
Article: Supreme Court questions process of appointments to Election Commission: here’s how the system functions; Times Face-Off: Has the Election Commission’s independence been diluted?Fixing Election Commission(Pratap Bhanu Mehta)
Article Link: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-law/supreme-court-election-commission-appointments-procedure-explained-8288135/
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/times-face-off-has-the-election-commissions-independence-been-diluted/articleshow/82206995.cms
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/pratap-bhanu-mehta-judiciary-may-not-be-the-best-selector-election-commissioners-8285736/
Yojna IAS daily current affairs eng med 28th November
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