Ex-CEC’s letter urging Navin Chawla’s sacking out

The Union law ministry on Sunday released the 93-page letter from former chief election commissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswami to president Pratibha Patil, urging her to remove his Election Commission colleague, Navin Chawla, from his post for being partisan. Chawla is now the chief election commissioner.

The president’s office had, only the other day, refused to make the letter public earlier as Chawla was opposed to it. The law ministry’s hand was, however, forced by the Right to Information Act. The appellate authority under the RTI Act in the law ministry allowed the request of one SS Ranawat, a resident of Bhilwara in Rajasthan, for public access to the letter written by Gopalaswami in January last year.

The former EC had, in his letter to Patil, accused Chawla of “partisanship” and lack of “political neutrality” and had urged her to remove him from his post.
Former CEC’s letter seeking to sack Navin Chawla released

Gopalaswami maintained that as CEC at that time, he was empowered by the constitution to recommend Chawla’s removal. “My recommendation is, therefore, under the powers vested in me under the second proviso to article 324(5) of the constitution, to remove Shri Navin B Chawla, from the post of election commissioner,” Gopalaswami had said in his January 16, 2009 letter, months before the general elections, during which he demitted office.

Opposition parties, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party, have consistently accused Chawla of being ‘biased’ and had protested against his appointed to the election commission. They had launched a campaign to stall his plans to become chief election commissioner.

The Manmohan Singh government had rejected the former CEC’s allegations and opposition demands to sack Chawla and instead appointed him CEC.

In his letter, Gopalaswami said that as CEC he was in possession of “significant facts” that had led him to the “irresistible conclusion that Chawla’s continuance as election commissioner was not justified”.

Gopalaswami had cited 12 instances, which he said, “taken individually (they) appear to indicate Shri Chawla’s political partisanship. Collectively, they point to a continuity of consistent thought and action in furthering the interest of one party with which he appeared to be in constant touch, raising serious doubts about his political detachment”.

Gopalaswami had accused Chawla of trying to influence and win over the third election commissioner SY Quraishi to his side. “More pernicious were his attempts to influence election commissioner Dr Quraishi, not by dint of valid arguments, but by spreading stories that Dr Quraishi was supporting the opposite views,” he had said.

According to Gopalaswami, Quraishi had often confided to him that he was under pressure on the issue of elections in Karnataka. In his letter, the former CEC pointed out that Quraishi had once shared a comment made by Chawla to him that “they are angry with you not so much because you were instrumental in Sonia Gandhi getting a notice from the election commission on her birthday (a reference to the notice on the ‘maut ka saudagar’ - merchants of death - remarks during the Gujarat elections), but for the fact that you sided with the CEC in advancing the elections in Himachal Pradesh…”.

Gopalaswami said that he had kept his predecessors, JM Lyngdoh and BB Tandon, informed about the developments. “His present conduct seems part of a continuum of the conduct he had exhibited, of closeness to a certain political formation, during the emergency a little over 30 years ago, and more recently, prior to his appointment as EC, when he received donations for trusts which he and his family members ran, to the period of the last three and a half years in the EC.”
(With PTI reports)