May 29, 2020: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has set aside the Ordinance which curtailed the tenure of State Election Commissioner (SEC) and appointed a new SEC.

Andhra Pradesh Government had earlier reduced the tenure of the former SEC, N. Ramesh Kumar, from five years to three, resulting end of his tenure . The High Court held that the Ordinance does not apply in retrospect.

“Curtailing of the tenure of N. Ramesh Kumar, the State Election Commissioner, by the way of an Ordinance is unconstitutional,” the Court observed.

On April 10, the Andhra Pradesh government  ousted then state chief election commissioner N. Ramesh Kumar by promulgating an ordinance reducing his term of office from five to three years. The Government had appointed Justice (Retd.) V. Kanagaraj as new SEC of Andhra Pradesh.

Kumar knocked the doors of Andhra Pradesh High Court and filed a petition praying for the suspension of all further proceedings pursuant to the ordinance and Government Orders through which Madras High Court retired judge V. Kanagaraj (one of the respondents) was appointed as the SEC.

The former Andhra Pradesh’s SEC said in his petition that “the impugned ordinance sought to circumvent the Constitutional prescription that the SEC could be removed only by following certain established procedures. By merely reducing the tenure and a condonation of that approach would effect the independence of the Constitutional body”.

It’s notable that then SEC Kumar had put a hold on elections to the municipalities, zilla parishads, mandal parishads and gram panchayats in March this year due to the Coronavirus emergency across the nation.

Acting on the complaints of various political parties, the former SEC had also ordered all the district collectors to check whether the election candidates of the ruling party are taking advantage of the distribution of relief money and materials to influence the voters in their favour.

Jagan Mohan Reddy led Andhra Pradesh government didn’t like the former SEC’s moves and used its legislative powers to reduce the term of SEC.

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