The Centre will introduce a bill in Rajya Sabha on Thursday that will exclude the chief justice of India from a panel that was constituted to advise the president regarding the appointments of the election commissioners, according to reports. The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Services and Term of Office) Bill, 2023, proposes to replace the chief justice with a member of the Cabinet, who will be nominated by the Prime Minister. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As far as reports are concerned, in March, a five judge bench of the Supreme Court had held in a landmark judgement that appointments of election commissioners of India must be made on the advice of a committee that would have the prime minister, the leader of opposition and the chief justice as its member. The poll panel includes the chief election commissioner and the two election commissions. Earlier the court had asserted that this arrangement will carry on until Parliament enacts a law on the appointment process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier to the top court\u2019s ruling, election commissioners were appointed solely by the Union government. Nonetheless, opposition parties and some non-governmental organisations had approached the court claiming that the poll body was acting in a biased manner and that the appointment process of the election commissioners was not transparent. The opposition parties sought an independent mechanism for the appointment of election commissioners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its ruling, the apex court had noted that the poll panel has to be aloof from all kinds of subjugation from the executive. One of the ways it can interfere is cutting of financial support, the judges then noted. They added that a vulnerable Election Commission would result in an insidious situation and detract from its efficient functioning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court also underlined that the successive governments have completely destroyed the independence of the Election Commission by ascertaining that no chief election commissioner since 1996 has got the full six-year term. On the other hand, the Centre had argued that the earlier system of appointing election commissioners was in consonance with constitutional provisions. It claimed that the process had ensured that the commission was working in a free and fair manner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to reports, a vacancy will arise in the poll panel in February when Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey demits office on attaining the age of 65 years. Notably, his retirement will take place just few days before the poll body would declare the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Services and Term of Office) Bill, 2023, proposes to replace the chief justice with a member of the Cabinet, who will be nominated by the Prime Minister.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":484113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497],"tags":[1803,1028,75877],"yst_prominent_words":[27462,4714,20926,4316,4308,16170,4135,53215,20997,4092,4317,4293,4091,12480,24388,25880,4396],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/08\/10132621\/Prabhatkhabar_2020-10_d91d01d9-d3d2-4df1-91e3-c9813b35e6ea_926585_867180_election_commission.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484111"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=484111"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=484111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}