OP Rawat will be new poll panel chief Controversy dogged Joti’s 6-month stint
NEW DELHI: Election commissioner OP Rawat will be the new chief of the poll panel that also got a new member in Ashok Lavasa, a former finance secretary, the government announced Sunday.
A 1977-batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, Rawat, who joined the Election Commission in August 2015, takes over as the chief election commissioner from Achal Kumar Joti whose term ends on Monday.
Rawat’s elevation came on the day President Ram Nath Kovind accepted the Election Commission’s recommendation to disqualify 20 legislators of Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for holding office of profit.
Rawat had in April 2016 recused himself from a poll panel hearing to assess if the MLAS were holding office of profit after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal accused him of bias.
Kejriwal, who is also the AAP chief, had alleged that Rawat was close to Madhya Pradesh chief minister and senior BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chauhan.
A miffed Rawat decided to stay away from the hearing to “uphold the public perception of the impartiality and objectivity of the Election Commission of India”. He re-joined the hearing after CEC Nasim Zaidi demitted office.
Rawat takes over at a time when opposition has been accusing the poll panel of doing government’s bidding.
It faced criticism for deferring the Gujarat election. Several political parties, including the AAP, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress, have repeatedly questioned the efficacy of the electronic voting machines after the BJP’S stunning win in the last year’s Uttar Pradesh assembly poll.
Rawat has i n t he past expressed concern over what he said was the new norm of winning at all costs.
Addressing a seminar on poll reforms, the Banaras Hindu University alumnus frowned upon the practice of “poaching of legislators, extolled as smart political management; strategic introduction of money for allurement, tough-minded use of state machinery for intimidation etc. are all commended as resourcefulness”.
He recently surprised many with his statement that the poll panel would be ready to hold assembly and Lok Sabha elections simultaneously after September 2018.
While parliamentary polls are due only in 2019, eight states vote for new assemblies this year.
The BJP has been pushing for simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha polls but the suggestion has found little support among the political class.
A 1980-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, Lavasa was the finance secretary from June 2016 till October 2017. He was also a secretary in the finance ministry’s expenditure department.
His biggest achievement perhaps is that as the environment secretary, he played a vital role in India joining the Paris accord that aims to control emissions by 2022.
Lavasa also introduced online application for environment clearances, significantly reducing the time required for them. NEWDELHI: Achal Kumar Joti’s sixmonth tenure as the chief election commissioner that ends on Monday was mired in controversy. As the head of the poll panel, which is mandated to carry out elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, Joti came under the Opposition’s attack for deferring polls in Gujarat instead of clubbing it with Himachal Pradesh, and, more recently, for the recommendation to the President to disqualify 20 MLAS of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for allegedly holding office of profit.
For deferring Gujarat election, the Opposition accused Joti, who had served as principal secretary to Narendra Modi when he was the chief minister of that state, of partisanship. But it was also all praise for him for disqualifying the votes of two Congress rebel lawmakers in the state’s Rajya Sabha polls, which allowed Congress MP Ahmed Patel to win a closely contested battle.
However, its decision to agree to the Gujarat government’s request to give it more time to wind up rehabilitation and relief operations in flood-affected areas of the state did not go down well with the Opposition. A slew of sops announced by the administration in the run up to the polls gave an opportunity to the Opposition to train its guns at the EC.
The Congress alleged that the BJP government appeared to be “putting pressure” on the EC.
Described as a “meticulous” official who stresses on “detail”, Joti has been in the eye of a storm after the ruling party in Delhi accused the EC of not following due process before recommending the disqualification of its 20 legislators who were accused of holding an office of profit.
A 1975- batch IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre, Joti has maintained a steadfast silence on the accusations levelled by the AAP, which said he defied “principles of natural justice” and did not hear the MLAS’ case.
Officials who worked with Joti since he joined the EC in 2015 said during his term in the office, he streamlined the e-filing system for maintaining official records and also pushed for transparency in payments.