Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami’s recommendation against Election Commissioner Navin Chawla is predictably setting off alarms that a constitutional crisis may be at hand. Gopalaswami’s letter to the president suggesting that his colleague be removed from the Election Commission on grounds that he is “partisan” has drawn the EC into two debates. One is the legal debate. Recommendation of action against an election commissioner is uncharted terrain constitutionally. Legal experts are divided on the validity of Gopalaswami’s action and on what the constitutionally valid next steps could be. A multi-member EC, as developments since T.N. Seshan’s stormy tenure as CEC in the ’90s show, is still a work in progress. And the debate ensuing from the current development could bring clarity to the commission’s composition and functioning in more ways than may be immediately obvious.

However, for this to be constructively conducted, it is important that participants in the second debate, the political one, be alert to the national interest. Given that Gopalaswami’s recommendation comes upon a BJP complaint about Chawla’s proximity to the Congress, there is great danger that the two political parties could entrench themselves in extremely partisan corners. This would militate against their own interests. This is not the first time that members of a commission have been targeted by political parties. Seshan was caught in a very public and very aggressive standoff with the Narasimha Rao government. In his term as CEC, J.M. Lyngdoh was targeted by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. And even the current commission had its brush with allegations of possible bias on the timing of the Karnataka assembly elections. But here is the bottomline. Each time there was not a doubt that the polls conducted were free and fair; never was the legitimacy of the new House in any way compromised. So, even as the debate rages on the composition of the commission, as it inevitably will, it needs to be acknowledged that it is the EC’s procedures and record that check against bias in the conduct of elections. No political party can possibly afford to let the crisis get so out of hand that, two months before a general election, its legitimacy is questioned.

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