The Election Commission is not just upset with law minister Salman Khurshid but also with the BJP for questioning it autonomy.
Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi has shot off a letter to BJP president Nitin Gadkari protesting against an article by party spokesperson Sanjay Kaul claiming that Quraishi had "converted his office into a strategic arm of the Congress".
This was with reference to the commission’s announcement of elections dates in Uttar Pradesh in February and Uttarakhand on January 30, which Kaul claimed would help the Congress to benefit from anti-incumbency factor in these states. BSP is the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh and BJP in Uttarakhand.
“When the EC becomes party to a Government’s election strategy, it not only loses its credibility but it also demeans democracy,” Kaul said in the article on December 30.
Sources said that Quraishi wanted to know from Gadkari whether the views expressed by Kaul were the official views of the party or not. The EC had taken objection to a national political party raising eye brows regarding conduct of a Constitutional body knowing well the constraints in deciding the poll dates.
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When contacted Quraishi refused to comment saying the commission has expressed its views to the letter to BJP president.
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When contacted Quraishi refused to comment saying the commission has expressed its views to the letter to BJP president.
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Even though Gadkari has not responded to the concerns raised by EC, the BJP on Saturday termed the commission as “most independent organization in India” and accused the Congress of trying to “humiliate” it with respect to ban on implementation of 4.5 percent minority quota.
"Congress finds this inconvenient and is trying to belittle the importance of the EC,” BJP leader Balbir Punj said.
Quraishi had earlier written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against Khurshid who had said his (Law) ministry had administrative control over the Constitutional body and had powers to decide on foreign tours of the Election Commissioners.
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.
