SC questions govt on method to pick CECS
NEW DELHI: A Constitution bench in the Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Union government if it could explain the method followed, or yardsticks adopted, in picking the chief election commissioner (CEC) and the election commissioners (ECS), and termed it “disturbing” that India has not had a woman CEC in 75 years of its Independence, suggesting that gender diversity in the appointment in the Election Commission of India is as important as having competent and independent people to head the poll body.
With the government silent on the method, the bench remarked: “It looks like there is no mechanism and you follow your own procedure. Is it not defeating the wishes of the framers of the Constitution when you say that there is no vacuum while the Constitution lays down that such appointments have to be subject to the provisions of the law to be made by Parliament?”
The bench’s remarks are significant as they come amid criticism by the government of the apex court’s own model of selecting judges for constitutional courts. Last week, Union law minister Kiren Rijiju commented that the Supreme Court collegium appoints people who are known to the judges and appear before them. At different occasions in the last one month, Rijiju has termed the collegium system “opaque”, and described the Indian selection system as the only one where judges appoint judges.
Later in the proceedings, the bench, which was hearing a clutch of petitions demanding an independent selection panel to appoint CEC and other ECS, lamented that judges are criticised for favouring candidates known to them when they make selections through the collegium system. “We are also the stakeholders when we appoint judges. People are making comments that we are making appointments of people we know. We have been saying that we assess everything; we look at the credentials and the judicial knowledge, but still, we cannot rule out the perception.”
Commenting on the selection of CECS and ECS, the bench, headed by justice KM Jospeh, said: “There may not be any process absolutely perfect to get honourable men, or let us say honourable women. That brings us to the fact that we have not been able to get even a single woman chief election commissioner in the last 75 years. We find it a little disturbing”. The other members of the bench are justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy and CT Ravikumar. To be sure, India has had one woman CEC, VS Ramadevi, who served in that position for two weeks in 1990; she went on to become the first woman governor of Karnataka in 1999.
The bench observed that the mechanism for the selection of the CEC and ECS appear to be a “grey area” and that the SC could examine the necessity of having a better system since Parliament is yet to come up with a law to regulate appointments in ECI.
It remarked that the court cannot stop the Parliament from framing a law but the option of putting in place a mechanism until there is a law is open before the court.
Attorney general R Venkataramani, representing the Centre, could argue only for a few minutes before the bench called it a day. In his brief submissions, the AG claimed there is “no vacuum” in the law and therefore, judicial intervention is not required. He will resume his arguments on Tuesday next week.