Government opposes in Supreme Court plea on CEC issue

New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday made it clear in the Supreme Court that it is not possible to amend the law to equate the removal proceedings of Chief Election Commissioner, a permanent constitutional functionary with that of two Election Commissioners.

The Centre said this in an affidavit filed in response to a notice issued on a PIL filed by advocate Ashiwni Kumar Upadhyaya seeking a direction to amend the Constitution to grant protection to two Election Commissioners from arbitrary removal on par with the CEC.

The petitioner pointed out that the protection that ECs shall not be removed except on the recommendations of the CEC would not amount to equal treatment of two ECs with that of CEC. He submitted that the CEC and ECs enjoy the same decision-making powers, which is suggestive of the fact that their powers are at par with each other. However, Clause (5) of the Article 324 of the Constitution does not provide similar protection to the ECs and it merely says that the ECs cannot be removed from office except on the recommendation of the CEC.