The entire country was taken by surprise when the President on Saturday decided to accept the resignation of Arun Goel, one of the Election Commissioners, a few weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Arun Goel had been appointed to the august office less than two years ago and quit in a huff leading to all kinds of speculation regarding his own conduct in the past, as well as his reported differences with Rajiv Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner.
The immediate fallout is that the EC has been left with only Rajiv Kumar since there was already a vacancy that needed to be filled up. Effectively it means that there are two clear vacancies in the EC and that too on the eve of the crucial elections. The resignation has also led to questions about the integrity of the Poll body, which enjoys a constitutional status and is looked up to by many countries around the world as a unique institution.
Unconfirmed reports doing the rounds claim that the differences within the Commission over the conduct of polls in Jammu and Kashmir and Bengal could have been the possible reason prompting Arun Goel to put in his papers. It needs to be recalled that till 1993, the Election Commission had only one Boss.
TN Seshan was the last such CEC but his wings were clipped when the then government decided to bring in Manohar Singh Gill and GVG Krishnamurthy to the Commission, a move which was upheld by the Apex Court. There have been numerous occasions when the CEC and the ECs did not see eye to eye but since they enjoyed equal powers, the majority view prevailed.
When N.Gopalaswami became the CEC, he had to deal with Navin Chawla and SY Quraishi, who both differed with him on multiple occasions. But the work never suffered. Sunil Arora, had a controversial tenure which led to the resignation of Ashok Lavasa, one of the Commissioners mid-way. Now Arun Goel’s departure from the Commission means that the government shall have to appoint two new Commissioners very soon as per the latest procedure, which has been approved by Parliament but has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
The Opposition is certainly going to raise questions about whoever gets appointed even though the new Commissioners may only have a peripheral role, with the CEC, quite competent to conduct elections, under the present extraordinary circumstances. The new law states that the ECs would be appointed by a panel which has the Prime Minister, a Cabinet minister and the Leader of the Opposition thus ensuring that the government of the day has the major say.
Ideally speaking in order to make this process work diligently, the government could have been more tactful. The panel of names from which the ECs are appointed is drawn up by the Law Ministry and these names cannot be there unless the Prime Minister has approved them. Thus, if the leader of the Opposition was given the choice to pick from this panel, the final names would be those which had the pre-approval of the Centre in the first instance. Anyway, it is for the government of the day to figure out how to move forward.
This controversy has also resulted in conjectures related to the resignation of Arun Goel. Retired bureaucrat EVS Sarma, known for his critical appraisal of decisions taken by successive governments, has shot off a letter to the President demanding an explanation about the points raised by him. The answers will not come, but the gossip mills would attribute motives leading to this hurried resignation.
As it is the social media is talking about differences between the top two guys on election dates in J&K and Bengal. This seems unlikely since both would not have gone against the suggestions of the Centre since deployment of security forces have to be made accordingly. Thus, there is also speculation that Arun Goel quit before his name would have figured in some scam in Punjab involving a major real estate group which has ambitious projects in various parts including new Chandigarh.
The group and its premises were raided two years back by the the ED and Income Tax department in connection with a scam entailing 3000 crore rupees cash transactions. The ED and the IT are again scrutinizing the records of this group and this fresh examination of details has taken place in the past few days. The insinuation is that Arun Goel had a close connection with this group from the time when he was the Urban Development secretary in Punjab. He had subsequently joined the Centre in the Urban Development ministry, from where he had to leave since the then Union Minister Kamal Nath was not satisfied with his functioning.
These are matters, which are difficult to establish and thus cannot be authenticated in any manner. However, such a speculation cannot be stopped in the social media till the government comes clear on the matter. There is also this talk about Arun Goel’s close proximity to the Badal family and the late Chief Minister considered him like his son, since there was a transactional linkage with his in-laws in Dabwali regarding agricultural procurements.
The short point is that Arun Goel’s resignation has cast a shadow over the working of the Election Commission, which otherwise works on auto-pilot once the polls are notified since the systems are all in place. Goel or the Centre must put all the conjectures regarding the resignation to rest at the earliest in the interests of the constitution and its credibility.