New Delhi: All four former chief election commissioners (CECs) who approved the idea of ‘one nation, one election’ have faced questions of independence during their tenures.

The high-level committee led by former President Ram Nath Kovind on ‘one nation, one election’, whose report was approved by the Union cabinet last week, consulted four CECs and eight state election commissioners (SECs) before recommending that simultaneous elections could be implemented across the country. All but one SEC approved of the idea of simultaneous elections.

Tamil Nadu SEC V. Palanikumar cited the “pervasive dominance of national issues over local considerations” and the “efficacy of local governance” as reasons for disapproving the idea, according to the panel’s report.

However others concurred with the Union government’s advocacy of ‘one nation, one election’.

The four former CECs who were consulted include – Achal Kumar Joti (July 2017-January 2018), O.P. Rawat (January-December 2018), Sunil Arora (December 2018-April 2021) and Sushil Chandra (April 2021-May 2022).

All four served during the Modi government years and all supported the idea of ‘one nation, one election’.

Controversial tenures of four CECs consulted by Kovind panel

All four former CECs consulted by the committee had faced questions of independence during their respective tenures.

Joti came under criticism from opposition parties during his six-month tenure as CEC after the Election Commission (EC)’s decision to defer the Gujarat polls in 2017 instead of conducting them along with those in Himachal Pradesh. The opposition Congress had then accused the poll body of delaying the Gujarat assembly polls to suit the BJP.

Just days before his term ended in January 2018, the EC under Joti recommended to the president the disqualification of 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs of the Delhi Assembly, finding them guilty of holding an alleged office of profit.

Rawat’s time in the EC was also not free of controversy. In 2017, as election commissioner, Rawat recused himself from hearing all cases and complaints related to the AAP after then-Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal questioned his impartiality and claimed his proximity to BJP leaders including then-Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, when the poll body was examining cases relating to the disqualification of AAP MLAs in alleged office of profit violations.

Later as CEC, he returned for the oral hearings of the cases after the Delhi high court set aside the disqualification of the MLAs.

It was during CEC Arora’s tenure that the EC saw internal discord during the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign after former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa’s demand that dissent notes be recorded in the commission’s orders on model code violations was rejected with a majority vote.

Lavasa........

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