After Speaker motion, INDIA bloc eyes CEC impeachment over Bengal SIR

Union Parliamentary Affairs minister Kiren Rijiju may have confirmed that the motion moved by 118 Opposition MPs seeking removal of Om Birla as Lok Sabha Speaker will be taken up for discussion on March 9, the day Parliament reconvenes after the current recess period.

Yet, the second half of the Budget Session, scheduled for March 9 to April 2, could see another big confrontation between the Centre and Treasury Benches with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar as its vortex.

Though still only under consideration within the INDIA bloc as of now, sources say a motion to impeach the CEC could be on the cards when Parliament reconvenes. Unlike the motion seeking Birla’s removal, which had the Congress as its prime mover, the bid to initiate impeachment proceedings against Kumar is being made by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which has been intensifying its fight against the Kumar-led Election Commission on the issue of the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of Bengal’s electoral rolls.

Mamata's Delhi visit

Mamata, the Trinamool Congress chief, had first mooted the idea of moving an impeachment motion against Kumar during her visit to the national capital. Her Delhi visit had included a reportedly antagonistic meeting with the CEC and other Election Commissioners on February 2 and her highly publicised in-person pleading before the Supreme Court in the ongoing Bengal SIR case on February 4.

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While conceding that a motion to impeach Kumar would not go through in Parliament because the numbers favour the BJP-led ruling NDA coalition, the Bengal Chief Minister had told reporters on February 3, “We will bring impeachment motion against the CEC; they want to ensure nobody has voting rights… it will be good to have it (the impeachment motion) on record (of Parliament).”

Subsequently, while the Congress was trying to get INDIA bloc parties on board its plan to seek Birla’s removal, Trinamool Congress MP and Mamata's nephew Abhishek Banerjee had formally sought the Opposition group’s support for moving an impeachment motion against Kumar.

TMC up in arms

Sources in the Opposition camp said as the Congress proceeded to draw up the motion, under Article 94 (C) of the Constitution, seeking Birla’s removal, and got INDIA partners like the DMK, Samajwadi Party and RJD on board (the motion was submitted on February 10, three days before Parliament adjourned for the recess), the Trinamool did not press the matter to be taken up in the first half of the budget session.

However, the Trinamool made its displeasure known to the Congress about its suggestion not being given primacy and chose not to sign the motion seeking Birla’s removal even Abhishek maintained that if the motion is indeed accepted his party will support it on the floor of the House.

Now, with Rijiju confirming that the motion seeking Birla’s removal will be taken up for discussion on March 9, it is clear that the Opposition’s motion has been admitted. As such, the Congress, which had initiated the move against Birla, would want at least all parties of the INDIA bloc, if not the wider Opposition, to support the motion when it is debated and voted upon on March 9. The Trinamool, say sources, has informed the Congress that it will stand with the INDIA bloc on the motion against Birla but wants the same courtesy extended to it if and when it decides to seek Kumar’s impeachment.

More about symbolism

It is not lost on the Opposition that it lacks the numerical strength in Parliament to have either motion, one seeking Birla’s removal and the other intended to seek the CEC’s impeachment, passed. Both moves are symbolic and are meant to convey the Opposition’s growing unease with what Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly called an “erosion of the independence of constitutional functionaries and institutions”.

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The Trinamool’s bid to seek Kumar’s impeachment is also high on political optics. From emerging as the only party chief to appear and plead personally her case against the SIR in the Supreme Court to meeting the CEC and then lambasting him before the media as “a liar” to now making a bid to rally the Opposition for impeaching Kumar, Mamata Banerjee wants to make it clear ahead of the Bengal assembly polls that she remains a streetfighter who won’t desert her people in what she repeatedly calls her fight against the BJP and its divisive agenda.

A final call on whether the Trinamool indeed comes true on its threat to seek Kumar’s impeachment will only be taken after Bengal draft electoral rolls are published on February 28.

Challenging process

Trinamool sources, however, say even if the entire INDIA bloc gets on board the impeachment plan, progress on the motion would itself be challenging given that process to remove the CEC, as mandated under Article 324 (5) of the Constitution, is as long drawn and complicated as one to impeach Supreme Court judges.

Unlike a motion to seek the removal of the Lok Sabha Speaker, which can be moved by just two MPs of the Lower House, a motion to impeach the CEC needs to be backed by a minimum of 100 MPs in the Lok Sabha or 50 MPs in the Rajya Sabha. The Trinamool has only 28 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 12 MPs in the Rajya Sabha. This makes it essential for the party get INDIA allies on board if it ultimately decides to move the motion seeking Kumar’s impeachment.

Sources in the INDIA bloc say there is “in principle consensus” among most of its constituents, including the Congress party, that Trinamool’s suggestion to seek the CEC’s impeachment should be heeded. However, once the motion is filed and accepted, what follows is a cumbersome process unlike the one followed in the case of a motion seeking the Speaker’s removal. In the case of a motion seeking the Speaker’s removal, once it is admitted and 14 days have passed since the notice being served, the motion can be straight away listed for discussion and voting in the Lower House.

Time is a factor, too

The CEC, the Constitution mandates, “shall not be removed from his office except in like manner and on the like grounds as a Judge of the Supreme Court”. This means even if the Opposition succeeds in getting its motion to impeach Kumar admitted, it would have to wait a long time before the issue even comes up for discussion in Parliament.

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If the motion is admitted, a three-member inquiry committee will have to first be constituted to go investigate the charges of “proved misbehaviour or incapacity”. It is only after the inquiry committee completes its task and submits its report to Parliament that the matter would come up for a detailed discussion.

Ironic as it may seem, the numerical requirement for the CEC’s impeachment too is at a higher bar than the one needed to sack a Lok Sabha Speaker, though both, if moved squarely by the Opposition without support of the Treasury Benches, are near impossible to pass. For removing a Speaker, the motion needs to be supported by a simple majority of the full strength of Lok Sabha (273 members) but in the case of impeaching a CEC, this requirement is set at “a majority of the total membership” of the House in which the notice originates and further “by a majority of not less than two-third of the members of the House present and voting”.

Intra-bloc relations

This complex procedure for seeking the CEC’s impeachment is what discouraged the Congress and other Opposition parties from attempting to move such a motion so far despite Rahul Gandhi’s high decibel attacks against a “compromised Election Commission”, said a senior Congress leader familiar with the Trinamool’s push to seek Kumar’s impeachment.

However, with the Trinamool already going public with its suggestion to move an impeachment motion against Kumar, even if only to make it a matter of parliamentary record, the Congress believes not endorsing such a move would, especially when the Trinamool seems to have already got the green light from outfits like the Samajwadi Party, the RJD and the DMK, play out poorly.

It would prop up Mamata Banerjee as the only leader in the Opposition camp bold enough to exhaust all avenues available in its anti-SIR fight while also painting Congress as the outfit that not just failed to keep its date with Opposition unity but, more importantly, chickened out despite Rahul’s piercing rhetoric against the poll panel and BJP’s alleged complicity in “hijacking democracy”.