Why Gyanesh Kumar’s Appointment As Ballot Chief Sparked Row: Defined
New Delhi:
Gyanesh Kumar, who was named as an Election Commissioner final 12 months, has been appointed the following Chief Election Commissioner of India, changing the outgoing Rajiv Kumar. Mr Kumar will oversee the conduct of the Bihar Meeting election later this 12 months and the polls in Bengal, Assam, and Tamil Nadu subsequent 12 months. He took cost as the brand new ballot chief this morning.
Mr Kumar’s appointment got here in a late-night growth on Monday, inside hours after a gathering of a three-member panel consisting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union House Minister Amit Shah, and Chief of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi. Nonetheless, it has sparked a row as Mr Gandhi didn’t approve of the appointment.
Row on Gyanesh Kumar’s appointment defined
The appointment of Mr Kumar because the ballot chief was executed primarily based on the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners (ECs) underneath the 2023 legislation. In accordance with these guidelines, the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners will likely be appointed by the President on the advice of a variety committee consisting of PM Modi because the Chairperson, a cupboard minister nominated by the PM – Amit Shah, and the chief of opposition in Lok Sabha.
Nonetheless, the legislation was challenged within the Supreme Court docket because the three-member panel allowed the Centre a dominant position.
The highest court docket was set to take up a listening to on a “precedence foundation” on February 19.
As a consequence of this, Mr Gandhi, who was current within the assembly, had opposed Mr Kumar’s appointment and requested the federal government to postpone it. Nonetheless, the Centre deliberate to press on regardless, saying that halting the method would imply leaving the important thing publish vacant.
After Mr Kumar’s appointment, the Congress chief gave a dissent be aware saying the assembly was meaningless as the brand new legislation has been challenged within the Supreme Court docket.
“In the course of the assembly of the committee to pick the following (Chief) Election Commissioner, I offered a dissent be aware to the PM and HM that said: ‘Essentially the most basic side of an unbiased Election Fee… free from govt interference… is the method of selecting the Election Commissioner and Chief Election Commissioner. By violating the Supreme Court docket order and eradicating the Chief Justice of India from the committee, the Modi authorities has exacerbated the issues of a whole lot of thousands and thousands of voters over the integrity of our electoral course of,” Mr Gandhi wrote in a publish on X.
He added, “Because the LoP, it’s my responsibility to uphold the beliefs of Babasaheb Ambedkar and the founding leaders of our nation and maintain the federal government to account. It’s each disrespectful and discourteous for the PM and HM to have made a midnight determination to pick the brand new CEC, when the very composition of the committee and the method is being challenged within the Supreme Court docket and is because of be heard in lower than forty-eight hours.”
Trinamool Congress chief Saket Gokhale additionally took a dig on the Centre, calling Mr Shah “India’s new Chief Election Commissioner”.
“Congratulations to Sh Amit Shah on changing into India’s new Chief Election Commissioner. The nation is assured that underneath your ready management, the objective of lowering ECI to a wing of BJP will likely be efficiently achieved,” he mentioned, including that the BJP wouldn’t reach West Bengal regardless of the appointment.
Who’s Gyanesh Kumar
Mr Kumar is a 1988-batch IAS officer from the Kerala cadre. He’s the senior of the 2 commissioners on the three-member panel that was led by Rajiv Kumar until he demitted workplace. The opposite commissioner on the panel is Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, an officer from the Uttarakhand cadre.
The brand new Chief Election Commissioner was part of the Union House Ministry earlier and had helped draft the invoice that scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 and cut up the previous state into two union territories.
He has additionally served because the Joint Secretary (Kashmir Division) and the Extra Secretary within the House Ministry.
