The commission will take over a week to decide whether Election Commissioner Navin Chawla will participate in the hearing on the controversial BJP CD case.
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission will take over a week to decide whether Election Commissioner Navin Chawla will participate in the hearing on the controversial BJP CD case.
Though the Commission is empowered to issue some kind of administrative order over the issue in the intervening period, the poll panel will first deal with the fate of one of its top official.
The BJP fired a fresh salvo at Chawla, demanding his removal as Election Commissioner for making Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB) pay Rs 44 lakh of the tax payers’ money for his security. Nine security guards were placed at Chawla’s residence when he was Chairman about a decade ago. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has taken an objection over this kind of financial irregularity. The report has added to the BJP’s ammunition against Chawla. The EC is expected to pronounce its decision on Chawla’s position on April 19.
The BJP has complained to the EC that the Congress has got a Fatwa from ‘Kul Hind Olmai Hind’ and ‘Shekhul Hadis’ of Deoband asking the Muslims to vote in their favour on religious grounds. Interestingly, the ruling Congress, which had been one of the petitioners demanding de-recognition of the main Opposition party, softened its stand on the subject, with Congress’s representative and union minister Kapil Sibal saying it was not seeking BJP’s de-recognition as a national political party. According to a petition filed by the Congress before the EC on April 8, the party clearly sought de-recognition of the BJP as a national party.
Sibal and CPI-M leader Nilotpal Basu, however, maintained that the EC has assured them that it would ‘immediately’ issue an administrative order to seize and prevent the distribution of the controversial CD. But an order of this nature will hardly have any effect on the ground as the BJP has already withdrawn the CD and has not been distributed since the time it was given to the media about a week ago.
During the hearing, which was attended by Chawla, the BJP questioned his participation in hearing the petition by the Congress and other political parties seeking BJP’s de-recognition when its prayer for his removal as an Election Commissioner has been admitted by the Supreme Court. The BJP’s contention was that it did not expect a fair assessment from Chawla as a case was pending against him in the SC in connection with allegedly receiving funds from a political party for his trust a few weeks before his appointment as the Election Commissioner by the Congress-led UPA government.
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