Author: Pioneer News Service
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: February 4, 2008
The BJP has slammed the reported move by the
UPA Government to amend the Constitution to strip the Chief Election Commissioner
of power to recommend the removal of other commission members, saying it was
a politically motivated exercise to preempt action against Election Commissioner
Navin Chawla.
The main Opposition also feels this episode
will once again put on trial the Left parties that will have to make a judgement
whether to blindly support the "constitutionally inappropriate"
action of the Congress or lean in favour of strengthening independent constitutional
institutions.
The NDA recently petitioned the CEC for the
removal of Chawla for his "partisan conduct" before his acquiring
the membership of the Election Commission and afterwards.
The NDA's petition had mentioned, extensively,
the role of Chawla during the Emergency, the observations made by Justice
Shah Commission, his acquisitions of prime postings during Congress regimes,
grant of MPLAD funds by Congress MPs to private trusts controlled by him.
BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley, who is
spearheading party's campaign against Chawla, said it is this close proximity
of Chawla to the Congress and its political functionaries that creates an
apprehension in the minds of the right thinking people that he cannot function
independently and in a detached manner as a member of the Election Commission.
"The Election Commission should be politically
detached and equi-distanced. If the practice of appointing partisan persons
as members of Election Commission gets established as a precedent, it will
provide a temptation for future Governments to pack the Election Commission
with its own sympathisers," Jaitley said.
The threat, he elaborated, is more acute because
it is not an independent collegium that nominates the members of the Election
Commission but the political Government of the day which does so.
The senior BJP leader said Law Minister HR
Bhardwaj's statement that Government might go for a constitutional amendment
to make CEC at par with other Election Commissioners is conclusive of how
much value the Congress attaches to the continuation of Chawla in the Election
Commission.
"When this statement is read in the context
of the action of Prime Minister's Office in not even forwarding the petition
seeking Chawla's removal to the Chief Election Commissioner for his recommendations,
the vested interest of the Congress in his continuation gets confirmed,"
Jaitley asserted.
The party reiterated Constitution deliberately
provided for a CEC to make recommendations whether to continue or not a member
of the Commission, as what goes on within the four walls of the Election Commission
is known only to the Chief Election Commissioner and not to the political
Government.
"If there is an allegation of bias against
a member of the Election Commission of favouring the Government in power,
it is only appropriate that it is the Chief Election Commissioner who adjudicates
the allegation of bias and not the political establishment which is the beneficiary
of that bias," Jaitley remarked.
The BJP said Government seems to have "conveniently
forgotten" that it is an amendment to the Constitution that it is perceiving
and the Congress does not command a two-third majority in either Houses of
the Parliament to amend the Constitution.
