Two heads better than one, said SC on CEC’s solitary vigil
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar is in sole charge of the Election Commission (EC) with the resignation of Election Commissioner Arun Goel ahead of the Lok Sabha polls’ announcement, and the Supreme Court has said that it is illadvised to leave an institution with such vast, exclusive and uncontrolled powers in the hands of one person, however wise he or she may be.
“There is no doubt that two heads are better than one, and particularly when an institution like the EC is entrusted with vital functions, and is armed with exclusive uncontrolled powers to execute them, it is both necessary and desirable that the powers are not exercised by one individual, however, allwise he may be,” a Division Bench of the SC observed in a judgment in 1991.
The Supreme Court, in S.S. Dhanoa vs Union of India, said one person at the helm of the powerful poll body was against the “tenets of democratic rule”.
“A single individual may sometimes prove capable of withstanding all the pulls and pressures. However, when vast powers are exercised by an institution which is accountable to none, it is politic to entrust its affairs to more hands than one. It helps to assure judiciousness and want of arbitrariness,” the top court reasoned.
Seshan case verdict
However, four years later, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in the T.N. Seshan case judgment, rather muddied the water with a single quizzical line.
The line in the judgment read that the EC could either be a singlemember body or a multimember body. The discretion was that of the President.
“The EC can therefore be a singlemember body or a multimember body if the President considers it necessary to appoint one or more Election Commissioners,” the fivejudge Bench had mentioned.
The Constitution Bench was interpreting clause 2 of Article 324, which said “the Election Commission shall consist of the Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners, if any, as the President may from timetotime fix…”
But the Bench goes on to agree with the S.S. Dhanoa judgment that a multimember Election Commission was perfectly in tune with the plain language of Article 324 (superintendence, direction and control of elections to be vested in an Election Commission).