New Delhi, Feb 14:
The selection of a new Chief Election Commissioner – who will oversee the conduct of elections in Bihar later this year and, most probably in Bengal and Tamil Nadu next year, as well as polls in Assam and Kerala – will begin in a few days, sources told NDTV Friday afternoon.
The committee that will select the new CEC is expected to meet on Monday.
It will consist of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghal, and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in his capacity as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
The CEC appointment process will likely kickstart a day before the Supreme Court hears petitions against the 2023 law about the selection of Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners. The law gives the central government, in this case the BJP, the upper hand in the appointment processes of a CEC and his two-member panel.
The old law said the EC members were to be picked by a panel that included the Chief Justice of India. The new replaces that individual with a union minister nominated by the Prime Minister.
The current Chief Election Commissioner is Rajiv Kumar, who will demit office on Tuesday.
Mr Kumar was appointed as the CEC in May 2022.
Since then he has overseen multiple high-profile electoral exercises, including the Lok Sabha election in April-June last year and Jammu and Kashmir’s first Assembly poll in over a decade.
He also oversaw the conduct of the Karnataka, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan polls in 2023, and concluded his tenure as the poll panel chief with last week’s Delhi election.
Mr Kumar also conducted the presidential and vice-presidential elections in 2022.
In January, while announcing the Delhi poll dates, Mr Kumar had quipped he plans to “detoxify” himself by spending several months in solitary confinement in the Himalayas after he retires.
“I will detoxify myself for the next four-five months… go to the Himalayas, be away from the glare of (the media). I need some solitude…” he said. Mr Kumar, a 1984-batch IAS officer from the Bihar/Jharkhand cadre, also spoke about wanting to give back to teach underprivileged children.
Mr Kumar’s tenure as the Chief Election Commissioner was marked by multiple complaints, particularly from the Congress and, in the run-up to the Delhi election, the Aam Aadmi Party.
The opposition had routinely alleged the EC favours the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and also questioned the use of EVMs, or electronic voting machines, claiming it can be hacked.
The EC also came under fire over the release of data on voting day; during the Haryana election last year, for example, the Congress was very critical of delays in publishing live voting trends.
Meanwhile, AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal had hit out last month, days before voting for the Delhi election, declaring the poll panel had “surrendered before the BJP”. Mr Kejriwal – whose party was thumped in the election, and who lost his seat in the Assembly – hinted darkly at a quid-pro-quo between Mr Kumar and the central government, a charge the CEC flatly denied.
On Wednesday, Mr Kumar asserted that that the system of poll data is robust with in-built “red flags” which ensure that “nothing can go wrong”. He declared himself “very confident” that nothing could go wrong; “… even if someone makes an error, the system won’t accept it”.
On EVMs, he dismissed talk of manipulation or voter fraud, pointing out the machines had passed several tests of judicial scrutiny, including by the Supreme Court. “EVMs are not hackable. Every claim of manipulation has been thoroughly investigated and debunked. This technology has consistently upheld the principles of free and fair elections,” he said.–(NDTV)