Oppn submits first-ever motion in LS & RS to remove CEC

For the first time in the history of Indian Parliament, the Opposition INDIA bloc MPs on Friday formally submitted Trinamool Congress-anchored notice for a “motion for the removal” (often referred to as ‘impeachment motion’) of a serving Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) as an escalation of the tiff over the Special Intensive Revisions (SIR) of the poll-bound West Bengal electoral rolls.

The Opposition submitting two sets of notices for motions to the offices of secretary generals of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, to start with, earns CEC Gyanesh Kumar an unenviable “first” even though it will take a few months to complete the process, including scrutiny of the motion by a yet-to-be-formed three-member committee, even as the number games in both the Houses favour the government to reject it in the event of the motion making it to the Houses for debate and vote.

Of the 25 CECs India has had till now, one CEC – TN Seshan in 1991 and an Election Commissioner (EC) Navin Chawla in 2006 – too were seriously caught up in the political crosshairs of the then Opposition but they got away with a protest in Parliament and an uninitiated Opposition memorandum to the President, respectively. But the Opposition indeed crossed the Rubicon this time in the case of Kumar.

The motion, it is learnt, makes broadly seven charges against Kumar, including that of “partisan and discriminatory conduct”, “misbehaviour”, conducting “mass disenfranchisement”, “deliberate obstruction of investigation of electoral fraud” and of doing SIR in a manner to help the BJP. The motion cites “examples” from SIR drive of Bengal and Bihar in support of their charge. The motion is said to have also drawn from the Supreme Court order in the Anoop Baranwal Vs Union of India case to claim that the Centre had refused to include the Chief Justice of India in the three-member search committee to appoint CEC and two ECs.

This motion, after the recent (rejected) resolution for the removal of the Lok Sabha Speaker, is the second show of united move by the otherwise fragile INDIA bloc. Sources said a total of 130 Opposition members of the Lok Sabha and 63 of the Rajya Sabha signed the two sets of motion, well above the minimum required 100 and 50 signatures from the LS and RS to submit such a motion.

Apart from the Trinamool, many members of the INDIA bloc, including Congress, DMK, SP, RJD, SS-UBT, NCP-SP, Left and others signed. Leaders of Opposition of both the Houses, “as is customary with such motions”, didn’t personally sign the motion but ensured many of their party MPs inked it.
As per the constitutional schemes, a motion for the removal can be filed only against the CEC even though the poll body also has two election commissioners working with the CEC.