Overnight appointment of election commissioners raises eyebrows

Shortly before the meeting to appoint election commissioners, the selection panel recieved a list of six candidates. These candidates were shortlisted from a pool of 212 names sent to the panel, a night before.

The selection meeting of the panel comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and the then leader of the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury proceeded despite having less time.

Two candidates were picked from the shortlist, their names were sent to the President who issued the appointment letters an hour later. With the Congress raising doubts over the functioning of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), alleging discrepancies in 20 seats during the Haryana elections, the election commission is once again under scrutiny as Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh gear up for Assembly and by-polls respectively.

According to a report by Article 14, the hasty appointment of election commissioners in March this year was similar to that of the Chief Election Commissioner in 2022. In November 2022, senior bureaucrat Arun Goel’s sudden voluntary retirement from the service and his almost instantaneous appointment as EC the same day sparked a controversy and a challenge in the Supreme Court. 

In 2023, the Centre amended the law for the appointment of election commissioners. The March 2024 single-day perusal of candidates and appointment occurred under this new selection system.

In September this year, the committee on ‘One Nation One Election’ led by former President of India stated that the country has witnessed over 400 elections since independence with the conduct of these elections being “beyond reproach”.

There was criticism of the 2024 Lok Sabha polling and counting process itself, first regarding the ECI’s reluctant response to complaints of hate speech at election rallies by top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi; and with regard to discrepancies found between data on total votes polled on the electronic voting machines (EVMs) and the total number of EVM votes counted.