Amidst the BJP’s demand to sack Election Commissioner Navin B Chawla for its alleged proximity with the ruling Congress party, the commission headed by Chief Election Commissioner will be visiting Nagaland on Thursday to review poll preparation for the assembly election to be held on March 5 this year.
The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswami will be assisted in the process by Navin B Chawla and S Y Quraishi, the two Election Commissioners.
Earlier on Wednesday the BJP submitted a fresh petition to CEC demanding Navin Chawla be removed from his office on the ground of lacking fairness and non-partisan approach and for being so closely with the Congress.
The petition seeking sack of Chawla was signed by one hundred and eighty MPs comprising the prominent leaders of the party as Leader of Opposition L K Advani, Party president Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley among other leaders of NDA.
BJP contends for the removal of Chawla from the office of Election Commissioner, as it was he under which Congress MPs had contributed money from their local area development funds to trust, which was a clear case of conflict of interests.
The petition submitted in this regard is not the first one. Initially the party had first approached with the petition signed by 200 opposition MPs to the then President, A P J Abdul Kalam. The President House forwarded the petition to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the latter refused to pass it to the Chief Election Commission so that to take action.
The political drama did not last here. The BJP under leader Jaswant Singh then took the shelter of Supreme Court by filing a petition there. The Centre argued there it was not bound to forward it to the Election Council.
Meanwhile CEC asserted that he had the power to take action if such petition comes before him. The Supreme Court then left the decision on BJP whether to go to CEC or not. The BJP said the fresh petition submitted to the Chief Election Commissioner was under the Apex Court’s directives.
The memorandum succumbed to the CEC obtains power from the constitution. The second provision to Article 324 (5) of the constitution asserts that Chief Election Commissioner has the requisite power to recommend removal of the Election Commissioner. The Article clearly specifies that whereas the CEC can be removed from the office only by an impeachment process, Election Commissioner can be detached from the office by the President on the CEC’s recommendation. And, the recommendation made by the CEC under the second provision to this Article 324 (5) was binding on the President.
Moreover the delegation of BJP leaders cited Chawla’s career record before and later becoming Election Commissioner in May 2005 is in itself an evidence to show his proximity with the Congress, its president Sonia Gandhi and her family.
In these circumstances, who could expect him to be fair to his work, ask a leader. BJP’s suspicion to some extent seems right particularly in view of the country gearing up for assembly polls in 10 states and eventually the biggest one-the general election in the next year.
The assembly election to the eleventh House in Nagaland is going to be held in March this year, where the ruling government was formed by the coalition of Nagaland People’s Front, NPF with the BJP.
To conduct a free and fair election on March 5, Nagaland Governor K Sankaranarayanan will have to do a lot more by undertaking sincere measure to prevent breakdown of the process within the limited period of President’s rule that came into effect on January 3 this year.
The tenth Nagaland Legislative Assembly is currently under temporary suspension awaiting ratification by Parliament.
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