Gopalaswami used the law he opposed 5 yrs ago

CEC N Gopalaswami used his powers under Article 324(5) of the constitution to recommend the removal of Navin Chawla. Ironically, five years ago, he was one of the signatories to a letter sent by the EC to the PM, criticizing this very article and seeking its amendment, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 2, 2009, 24:26:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami used his powers under Article 324(5) of the constitution to recommend the removal of fellow commissioner, Navin Chawla. Ironically, five years ago, he was one of the signatories to a letter sent by the election commission to the prime minister, criticizing this very article and seeking its amendment!

The letter had recommended that the procedure for removing any of the election commissioners should be same as that for the chief election commissioner — impeachment by parliament. “Article 324(5) is inadequate and requires an amendment to provide the very same protection and safeguard in the matter of removing election commissioners from office as is available to the chief election commissioner,” the letter argued.

The government did nothing about it.

Gopalaswami’s effort to remove Chawla from the election commission also goes against the 1993 amendment to the act setting up the election commission that said the three election commissioners should enjoy equal status. The chief election commissioner would be the administrative head, but the other two would not be his subordinates. In case of a difference of opinion among the three, the majority opinion would prevail, not necessarily the opinion of the chief.

This is also the practice that has been followed so far. When Navin Chawla objected to holding early assembly elections in Karnataka last year, while Gopalaswamy was keen to do so, it was the third election commissioner SY Quraishi’s opinion that tipped the scale in favour of Gopalaswamy. A few months later, Gopalaswamy wanted to postpone assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir because of the turmoil prevailing there at the time, while Chawla wanted to go ahead. This time Quraishi supported Chawla and elections were held in November-December.

"This controversy has done terrible damage to the image and credibility of an institution like the election commission,” said Jagdeep Chokkar, founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, which closely monitors the conduct of elections

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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