SC asks for specific files on appointment of Arun Goel as election commissioner
Taking the arguments on the appointment process for the Election Commission (EC) of India a step ahead, the Supreme Court has asked for specific files on the November 19 appointment of Arun Goel to the commission. The hearing will continue on Thursday.
The five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Justice K M Joseph, said it wants to know if there was any “hanky panky” in the appointment as Goel was only recently given voluntary retirement and immediately appointed to the poll body.
Goel’s appointment
Arun Goel’s appointment was mentioned by activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan during the hearing of a batch of petitions on the appointment process to EC. Bhushan pointed out that Goel recently retired as an IAS officer and was made part of the three-member EC just after the larger issue came up for hearing last week.
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Besides Goel, there are two other EC member – Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar and Anup Chandra Pandey. He is now in line to be the CEC after Rajiv Kumar demits office in February 2025.
“Arun Goel was, till Thursday, working as a secretary-level officer in the government. Suddenly, he was given VRS on Friday and appointed as an election commissioner,” Bhushan told the court. He was otherwise to retire on December 31 at the age of 60.
The court rejected the objections by government lawyer, Attorney General R Venkataramani, who said it wasn’t right to take up individual instances.
“We want to see what is the mechanism. We will not treat it as an adversarial and keep it for our record, but we want to know as you claim that everything is hunky dory… You have time till tomorrow,” the court told the government lawyer.
Goel took charge two days ago on Monday, November 21, according to the EC website. An IAS officer of the 1985 batch from the Punjab cadre, he retired as secretary, Union ministry of heavy industry, after more than 37 years of service.
Pointed questions
The court has also made some hard-hitting points on the appointment process on Wednesday.
It presented a “hypothesis” for the central government: “Do you think the Election Commissioner… if he’s asked to take on none less than the Prime Minister — it’s just an example — and he doesn’t come around to doing it: Will it not be a case of complete breakdown of the system?”
It also cited how “one of the Election Commissioners, in fact, resigned”.
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The court did not take names, but argued that the appointment system requires “a larger body” than just the Union cabinet to decide on names. “There is a dire need for change,” it said.
The court stressed that there should be “a transparent mechanism.”
Govt’s argument
The government has cited a 1991 law and past conventions of appointment recommended by the PM-led cabinet to the President, who then picks an officer. “Stray instances cannot be the grounds for the court to interfere. To safeguard the position is our endeavour,” the government’s lawyer submitted.
“First a list is prepared of all senior bureaucrats and then the list is sent to the law ministry which forwards it to the PM,” the lawyer explained. “The existing system is working fine and there is no trigger point for the court to intervene,” he said.
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“The court cannot interfere in the system only because we cannot show every single file how the appointment was done. You need to show instances wherein some wrong has happened. Merely on likelihood, apprehension or anxiety, interference from the court is not called for,” the government lawyer argued.
