New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused for the second time to ban a controversial new law on the appointment of election commissioners. However, the court added the petition to a list of pending cases on the subject and directed that all of them should be heard in April, possibly days before the general election. The court has also issued a notice to the central government seeking a response.
The new petition was filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms, an apolitical and non-partisan non-profit organization working on electoral and political reforms in the country.
During today's hearing, Advocate on Record Prashant Bhushan, who argued in favor of ADR, said the law should be banned now as one of the election commissioners, Anup Chandra Pandey, is retiring tomorrow.
If the operational part of the new law – which stipulates that appointments are based on the recommendation of a three-member committee headed by the Prime Minister and which includes a member of the Union Cabinet, and not the Chief Justice of India – remains in place, Mr. Bhushan, the petition is declared “ineffective”.
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However, a two-judge bench of Justices Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Dipankar Gupta disagreed and said issues of “constitutional validity are never futile (unnecessary)”.
“Sorry, we cannot grant you interim measures. A question of constitutional validity never becomes futile. We know our parameters for granting interim relief,” the court told Mr Bhushan.
Last month too, the court refused to ban the law – on the plea of Congress' Jaya Thakur, but said it was willing to 'test' it and sent notices to the Center and the Election Commission.
Ms Thakur's petition also demanded a ban on the law, which critics say gives Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP an iron grip on appointing election commissioners, and thus control over the Election Commission of India, which regulates and monitors all polls.
Critics have called for the inclusion of the Chief Justice of India, to offset any conflict of interest that might arise from the presence of politicians in the appointment panel.
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In March last year, the court even said the chief justice would be the third member of the panel.
However, that ruling was controversially overturned; the government has passed a bill to replace the chief justice with a member of the union cabinet to be nominated by the prime minister.
The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha in December even though most of the opposition was suspended. The opposition attacked the proposed law, saying it would jeopardize the poll panel's independence.
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