CEC's recommendation has hit credibility of poll panel:experts

New Delhi, Jan 31 (PTI) Constitutional experts
Saturday attacked India's Chief Election Commissioner N
Gopalaswami's decision to suo motu recommend removal of Navin
Chawla as Election Commissioner, saying the move has created a
"crisis" and its timing just ahead of the elections could make
people believe there is "some motivation".

Noted jurists Fali S Nariman, K K Venugopal and Shanti
Bhushan said the CEC move has "badly hit" the credibility of
the poll panel which is "very unfortunate".

"There is a crisis created by the CEC... I am a little
surprised that he did it at the time when he did it. If he had
done it a year before ... it might have been considered to be
a bona fide complaint because he was entitled to his views.

"But unfortunately he has done it at the time when
reasonable ordinary people will believe that there is some
motivation behind it," Nariman said.

His views were shared by Venugopal, who said "such a
recommendation at the fag end of his tenure is not
permissible."

Further, the decision taken by the CEC goes against
the 1995 verdict of the Supreme Court in the T N Seshan's case
in which the apex court had asserted that "if the power of
election commission was to be exercisable by the CEC as per
his whims and caprice, the CEC himself would become an
instrument of aggression and would destroy the independence of
the election commission," he said.

Bhushan, a former law minister, said Gopalaswami
should have written to the government long back and not on the
eve of the elections. "At this stage to create a crisis of
this kind is wholly improper and the Chief Election
Commissioner ought to resign," he said. (More) PTI SDG
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