Modi Government’s Election-Eve Manoeuvres Smell To Kingdom Come

By P. Sudhir

Three developments in one week – one positive and the other two, negative. The first was the Supreme Court order directing the State Bank of India to submit to the Election Commission by March 12 the details of electoral bonds for the Election Commission to put up on their website by March 15. This order came in the wake of the SBI’s appeal for time until June 30 to submit the details about the electoral bonds.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeal and now the people know who all donated funds to the BJP and at which juncture? An analysis of the data will establish if there was quid pro quo involved and whether any of the donor-companies were being hounded by central investigating agencies. This will help the electorate judge if there was a Hindutva-corporate corrupt nexus?

The second development was the Modi government’s notification of rules for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), more than four years after the Act was adopted in December 2019. The rules have been notified on the eve of the announcement of the Lok Sabha polls and this has raised eyebrows. The rules confirm that people of certain religious identities alone will be eligible for this fast track to citizenship.

Muslims are excluded. It is not necessary here to go into all the major constitutional and legal objections to the CAA. The rules operationalising this Act must be vigorously opposed. A specific problem arising out of the rules is that the cut-off date of December 31, 2014 provided for violates the provision of the Assam Accord where the cut-off date has been fixed as 1971. This had led to widespread opposition in Assam to the CAA when it was adopted.

Furthermore, the rules ensure that state governments have no say in the processing of applications for citizenship. The empowered committee at the state level and the district-level committees constituted to process the applications are packed with representatives of central government departments. There is only one invitee of the state government in both the state and district level committees. This has obviously been done to exclude state governments from having any say in the process of identifying people eligible for citizenship who are residing in their states. By some peculiar logic, officials of the postal department and railways have been found suitable for this work.

Here the Supreme Court has been remiss in not taking up and deciding on the around 200 petitions which were filed challenging the CAA as unconstitutional. Just as in the case of the electoral bonds and abrogation of Article 370, the delay and failure of the Supreme Court in giving a verdict has enabled the Modi government to get away with unconstitutional and undemocratic measures.

The third development concerns the Election Commission of India (ECI) which has a direct bearing on the conduct of the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. The past week saw the sudden resignation of one of the election commissioners, Arun Goel. Now, two new election commissioners have been appointed. But then, after the abrupt resignation of Arun Goel, there was only the chief election commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar remaining. The third member had already retired some months ago.

The appointment of Arun Goel itself had been done in great haste in November 2022 – a step that was questioned by a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, which had been hearing a petition to lay down the procedure for the appointment of the election commissioners by a neutral independent committee.

It is unclear what the real reason is for the resignation of Arun Goel, but it had led to two vacancies in the commission. The constitutional bench of the Supreme Court had in March last year held that the appointment of CECs and ECs should be on the basis of the recommendation of a committee consisting of the chief justice of India (CJI), the prime minister and the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. This was felt necessary by the court, so that the ECI could discharge its task of conducting free and fair polls by remaining aloof from all forms of subjugation by and interference from the executive.

However, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Modi government got a bill enacted in parliament regarding the appointment and conditions of service of the CEC and other election commissioners. This Act dropped the CJI from the selection committee and, instead, provided for a union cabinet minister to be nominated by the prime minister. Thus, the executive would have a majority in the committee of three, which defeats the purpose of the recommendation of the Supreme Court.

The three-member committee met on March 14 to select the two Election Commissioners. As expected, the two names suggested by the Government, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar, were selected. They will, along with the CEC, be conducting the Lok Sabha polls, which is to be announced shortly.

In the background of the systematic erosion of the independence of constitutional institutions, the subversion of the Election Commission as an independent body poses a serious threat to parliamentary democracy itself. (IPA Service)