Mainstream WeeklyIt is now established beyond doubt that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar’s act of depriving 13 crores Indian voters of their right to vote, simply to ensure a BJP government in state after state, was unilateral, patently illegal and unconstitutional because many of the decisions pertaining to the exercise of the Special Intensive Review (SIR), starting from Bihar to West Bengal to the rest of the country, lacked the necessary consent of the two other Election Commissioners, namely Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The meticulously probed expose by Ritika Chopra and Damini Nath on the front page of the Indian Express, September 23, established with requisite evidence that many important decisions of Gyanesh Kumar Gupta were taken deliberately keeping the other two Election Commissioners (ECs) in the dark, flouting the legal necessity of their consent and approval. The Election Commission is a three-member body and only the full complement comprises the Commission.
Article 324 of the Constitution of India created the Election Commission and empowered the Election Commissioner or the Commissioners, as the case may be depending on the pleasure of the President of India. Damini Nath of the Indian Express who covers the Election Commission and deserves our special appreciation of exposing Gyanesh Kumar’s wilful act of disenfranchising more than 13 crore Indian citizens from marginalised sections of society, explained in its September 26 issue that “How the Election Commission is supposed to arrive at decisions is laid out in the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Terms of Office) Act, 2023. Section 17 of the Act says that the “business of the Election Commission shall be transacted in accordance with the provisions of this Act.
“The Election Commission may, by unanimous decision, regulate the procedure for transaction of its business and also allocation of its business amongst the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners. All business of the Election Commission shall, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously and if the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners differ in opinion on any matter, such matter shall be decided according to the opinion of the majority,’ Section 18 of the Act says.”
The story had a tremendous impact, even though the embedded media, mainly the news channels tended to underplay the split wide open in Sanchar Bhawan. So much so that the day after the story appeared, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet issued a notice announcing the repatriation of Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar an IAS officer of AGMUT cadre to has parent cadre stating that the “Competent Authority has approved the proposal of the Election Commission of India for premature repatriation of Sanjay Kumar to his parent cadre ‘on personal grounds.” Sanjay Kumar held the supervisory charge of the ECINet under the administrative charge of Seema Khanna DG, of IT in the Election Commission and her extra ordinary control of the data loading and disseminating was becoming contentious in the EC, with Mr Sanjay Kumar apparently objecting to the functioning of this officer. When Sanjay Kumar went on a one day leave, immediately Gyanesh Kumar gave the charge to another Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg, ostensibly to maintain Seema Khanna’s unchallenged control of the data, which was flagged by the two ECs.
By February end Rajiv Kumar retired and went abroad to become inaccessible to any questions, passing the baton to Gyanesh Kumar who had to prove himself better than Rajiv Kumar to earn brownie points with MoSha. From the point of view of the BJP he was ideally qualified to head the Election Commission because of his past performance in regard to contentious Sanghi issues.
While posted in the Union Home ministry, Gyanesh Kumar drafted the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, which withdrew the special autonomous status granted to Jammu and Kashmir in 1947, by scrapping Article 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution and downgrading the only Muslim majority state in the country, J&K to a Union territory under the Central control, In January 2020, Kumar was assigned to the Ministry of Home Affairs, wherein he was involved in the establishment of Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the organisation overseeing the construction and management of the Ram Mandir at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid. Thus, Gyanesh Kumar having demonstrated his expertise in performing the task to the pleasure of MoSha, was ideally suited to manipulate the electoral rolls in a manner that only the BJP returns to power, which it did first in Bihar then of all the places in West Bengal where the BJP was never considered politically a big force. After that the victory in Delhi was a foregone conclusion. Still the defeat of the DMK and even more of its leader M.K. Stalin was as much a shocker as the defeat of Mamata Banerjee in Bengal.
But why should we heap all the blame on Gyanesh Kumar alone. What about our much-respected higher judiciary? When Bihar was subjected to SIR to deprive lakhs and lakhs of anti or non BJP voters of their voting rights on the specious plea of Bangladeshi infiltrators and dead or duplicate voters in the rolls, social activist Anjali Bhardwaj sought through a RTI from the Election Commission who had ordered this SIR. The Secretary, ECI replied, she told a TV channel “not the EC”. Then who? When the people went to the Supreme Court the two-judge bench challenged the petitioners to bring to its notice even one live person who had been struck off the voters’ list as dead by SIR. Political activist Yogendra Yadav appeared before the bench with not one but five women from different parts of Bihar who had been struck off pronouncing them dead while they were very much alive. The bench took note of that but refused to correct such glaring anomaly.
Encouraged by this tacit approval of the apex court Gyanesh Kumar became bolder in Bengal and threw out all norms of fairness and objectivity to the winds in ensuring with a vengeance only one thing, the defeat of Trinamul Congress and the establishment of a BJP rule in Bengal. When close to a crore voters were disenfranchised by Gyanesh SIR, the same bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the plea on behalf of the disenfranchised lightly saying, ‘So what if you won’t vote this time. You may do it next time.’ And when the matter was pressed further in the Supreme Court the court appointed 19 judicial tribunals to verify the claims of those deprived of voting, but without staying the SIR deletions. Months and months have passed and these tribunals have so much work as someone said that they may take at least two more elections to establish or reject the veracity of the deleted voters.
Is there any special bond between Gyanesh Kumar and CJI Surya Kant? The Allahabad High Court in a habeas corpus petition on behalf of a theatre artist and a young activist Akriti Chaudhry detained and jailed in April this year under NSA by the NOIDA administration under orders from Megha Roopam the NOIDA administrator for participating in a protest demonstration on behalf of poorly paid industrial workers. She is in jail since then. The bench of Justice Atul Sridharan and Achal Sachdev quashed the preventive detention of this 25-year-old Delhi University graduate and activist Akriti Chaudhary under the National Security Act (NSA), and called the State’s case against Akriti a "concocted story". The High Court criticized the conduct of the concerned official and flagged notice discrepancies. It ordered a five-lakh rupee compensation to Akriti to be recovered from the salaries of the concerned officials’, right from the SHO up to the District Magistrate. And the District Magistrate under whose signature Akriti was arrested and slapped with NSA happened to be Megha Roopam, the daughter of CEC Gyanesh Kumar.
Lokhit India editor and anchor Anuj Kumar in a video on this issue recalled that the Allahabad High Court had passed severe strictures on Megha Roopam saying she went against the oath of allegiance to the Constitution which she took on becoming a senior government servant. Justice Atul Sreedharan stated in this judgement that Megha Roopam’s conduct deserved to be condemned and being put in her service record. A rare commentary on the conduct of a senior officer. She went in appeal to the Supreme Court and naturally came up for admission before Justice Surya Kant, In the normal course, the Lokhit India editor pointed out, this habeas corpus issue ought to have gone to a bench of seniormost judges handling such cases by the Roster. But bypassing all four senior most judges, the CJI posted the matter to a junior bench of Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice N.K Singh who took no time to stay the Allahabad Hugh Court verdict against Megha Roopam. Why did this happen? What was the extraordinary hurry in saving the skin of this officer to grant such overall relief to this officer. Who wanted such out of turn relief for this officer?