Impeachment motion against CEC: Is it more about optics, than politics?

Two days after its motion seeking the removal of Om Birla as Lok Sabha Speaker was defeated, the Opposition has now sought the impeachment of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.

As first reported by The Federal, on February 17, the bid to impeach Kumar is being steered by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). The Trinamool, which has been locked in an escalating conflict with Kumar and the Election Commission (EC) over the special intensive revision (SIR) of Bengal’s voter rolls, had been imploring constituents of the INDIA bloc to jointly seek the CEC’s ouster.

Support from entire INDIA bloc

On Friday (March 13), the Trinamool not only succeeded in getting the entire INDIA bloc, including Banerjee’s arch rivals from the Left parties, to back the notice against Kumar but also secured the support of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which had exited the Opposition coalition over a year ago.

Also read: Can CEC be removed? Decoding INDIA Bloc's impeachment motion

Invoking Article 324 (5) of the Constitution and Section 11 (2) of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, the Opposition submitted separate notices in both Houses of Parliament seeking Kumar’s removal from office for a host of reasons, including “proven misbehaviour” and “partisan conduct”.

While initiated by Trinamool MPs, the notices have been endorsed by 130 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 63 MPs in the Rajya Sabha. The Constitution prescribes that notice for a motion to impeach the CEC must be signed by a minimum of 100 MPs if moved in the Lok Sabha and 50 MPs in the case of the Rajya Sabha. As such, the Trinamool’s initiative has crossed its first threshold.

This, however, means little in terms of the trajectory that the notices will take hereon. Just as the Opposition lacked the numbers to have its motion against Birla passed in Lok Sabha, it lacks the bench strength needed in both Houses of Parliament to impeach the CEC. In fact, even assuming that the Opposition’s notice against Kumar is admitted by the Lok Sabha Speaker and Rajya Sabha Chairman, the due process that lies ahead is a long one unlike the motion that was brought against Birla, which once admitted, had to merely be listed for discussion and, subsequently, voted upon in the Lower House to determine its outcome.

Complicated process

The process for impeaching a CEC is a far more complicated one when juxtaposed with the system for sacking a Lok Sabha Speaker. The CEC, Article 324 (5) of 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”.

Also read: Has SIR controversy hijacked West Bengal’s pre-election buzz? | AI With Sanket

This means even if the Opposition’s motion to impeach Kumar gets admitted, it would be a long time before it even comes up for discussion in Parliament. If the motion is admitted, a three-member inquiry committee will have to first be constituted to investigate the charges levelled by the Opposition MPs against Kumar. 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.

With Kumar expected to announce the Assembly poll schedule for Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Pondicherry early next week, electoral temperatures and political acrimony are set to soar.

The numerical requirement for the CEC’s impeachment too is set 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”.

Opposition leaders, thus, concede that like their resolution against Birla, the notice against Kumar too is about political optics. That the entire electoral apparatus has been systematically hijacked by the ruling BJP with the willing complicity of the Election Commission has been a recurring allegation of the INDIA bloc leadership. The launch of the SIR with Bihar last June and its subsequent pan-India roll out, Opposition parties have claimed, is yet another bid by the BJP-EC combine to tilt the electoral landscape in the BJP’s favour.

‘Kumar most arrogant’

Kumar’s term as CEC, which began last February, has been one of a widening trust deficit between the Opposition and the poll panel. Leaders across the Opposition bloc who The Federal spoke to described Kumar as the “most arrogant” and “brazenly partisan” CEC ever whose steering of the poll body had “dropped even the pretence of fairness” and turned the EC into a “frontal organisation of the BJP”. Banerjee and her party colleagues have, on more than a few occasions, publicly slammed Kumar as a “liar” and a “thug” while accusing him of acting against the Trinamool and the people of Bengal at the behest of the BJP’s top leadership.

With Kumar expected to announce the Assembly poll schedule for Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Pondicherry early next week, electoral temperatures and political acrimony are set to soar. A senior leader from Banerjee’s party told The Federal that the Trinamool-steered motion against Kumar is meant to “reaffirm and boost” the Bengal chief minister’s image of “the most formidable challenger to the BJP in Bengal and beyond, who will exhaust every avenue available to her in her fight against the saffron party”.

“The SIR has been an issue for the entire Opposition. It started with Bihar and all Opposition parties in Bihar protested. Various parties went to the Supreme Court against SIR and fought the matter legally but the only Opposition leader in the country who led from the front on this issue was our leader Mamata Banerjee. She herself went to the Supreme Court to plead, she went and met the CEC also. She took to the streets to protest against the illegal manner in which a section of voters, Trinamool voters, were being systematically removed. And now, even though we know we don’t have the numbers for success, we are bringing this motion against the CEC just so it becomes a matter of parliamentary record that this man (Kumar) completely compromised the EC (sic),” former Trinamool Congress MP and party spokesman Kunal Ghosh told The Federal.

Given that most Opposition parties have had uncomfortable run-ins with the poll panel in recent years and are convinced that the SIR is being misused to the BJP’s advantage, it did not take Banerjee’s party much effort to get them on board the plan to seek Kumar’s impeachment. The Congress party, which has had uneasy relations with Banerjee, had held out initially but finally agreed to come on board last week when the Trinamool made it clear that it would support the motion against Birla only if the Opposition unitedly backed a bid to impeach the CEC.

Will BJP exploit impeachment bid?

Yet, there are sections within the Opposition who worry that the bid to impeach the CEC so soon after the failed bid to get Birla sacked would do little to bolster the Opposition’s image but could end up being exploited by the BJP.

The impeachment motion against Kumar, if admitted, would present an ironic complication for the Opposition, says a senior advocate and Opposition MP

“No matter how genuine our grievances maybe against the Speaker or the CEC, we have to realise that these instruments that the Constitution has given us to seek the removal of people in high constitutional offices, be it the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha or the CEC or anyone else, are extraordinary instruments and they should be used only as a last resort. You cannot make a habit of invoking them every now and then. Unfortunately, that is exactly what we seem to be doing. In the last five years, we have tried to get the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha removed, then tried to get the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha removed and now, within days, we are seeking removal of Lok Sabha Speaker and the CEC. We come across as petulant losers while the BJP is having a field day using each of these opportunities to say that these motions we have brought are actually signs of our frustration and being unable to win elections,” a Congress veteran said.

A senior MP from the Samajwadi Party canvassed the same grouse with a different perspective. “Ordinarily, we should have been winning the narrative war because no other government in the history of India has seen the Opposition moving motions in Parliament demanding dismissal of practically all top constitutional post holders, from Vice President to Speaker to CEC. The impeachment motion against the CEC is being moved for the first time ever, the motion against the Speaker came after four decades, the motion against the Rajya Sabha Chairman (former Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar) was also unprecedented... we had contested the last Lok Sabha election on the Save Constitution slogan and we should have been able to tie all of this to that same slogan and tell the people that even a minority BJP government is dangerous for the Constitution but instead of us doing that, it is the BJP that is today telling the people that we are repeatedly defaming constitutional post holders because our concerns for Samvidhaan is only electorally driven.”

Ironic complication for Opposition

The impeachment motion against Kumar, if admitted, would present an ironic complication for the Opposition, says a senior advocate and Opposition MP. “This notice (for impeachment) seems to have come on the flawed understanding of some leaders that it will allow Opposition to expose the CEC and his partisan conduct of the EC in Parliament. What our honourable colleagues who have pushed for this notice don’t seem to get is that while the Congress’ motion against the Lok Sabha Speaker, though destined to be defeated, gave the Opposition a chance to air grievances on the floor of the Lok Sabha against the Speaker’s functioning, the notice against the CEC will not do so, at least not instantly.”

The lawyer-parliamentarian added, “The process to remove the CEC is supposed to be the same as that for removing a Supreme Court judge... What is that? You submit the notice after you have the required number of signatures, if the notice is admitted then the presiding officer of whichever House has admitted the notice directs the setting up of an inquiry committee similar to the one under the Judges Inquiry Act for impeaching judges and then the inquiry will happen and the report will come. So at least till that late stage, there is no compulsion for the Chair to even allow a discussion on your notice. So what are you going to achieve with seeking the CEC’s removal? I fail to understand.”