Opposition is right to question CEC, but move to impeach is unwise

The impeachment motion likely to be moved in Parliament by parties of the Opposition against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is not a step towards resolution of a political problem, but its disquieting symptom. Clearly, even a united Opposition does not have the numbers to carry the motion through. At best, therefore, it can use it to register a symbolic protest against what it sees as the EC’s biased functioning — the draft motion cites his “partisan and discriminatory conduct” and “mass disenfranchisement” through the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The motion against CEC Kumar is set to come on the heels of a similar Opposition move against the Speaker — the no-confidence motion against Om Birla, seeking his removal for the alleged failure to ensure the House’s impartial functioning, was rejected by a voice vote in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. In both cases, the Opposition is taking an extreme step to draw attention to the less-than-fair conduct of umpires. In both, there is merit in the Opposition’s grievances. But it needs to ask itself whether by rushing to use an instrument of last resort to score only a symbolic point, it undermines itself, while risking a hardening of confrontation with a high-ranking constitutional authority.

To be sure, the EC has acted in ways that invite accusations of political bias on the watch of CEC Kumar. He has treated the Opposition with disrespect and the poll body’s decisions have often handed the advantage to the ruling party. The conduct of the SIR in Bihar raised questions of pace and timing, setting off a scramble for hard-to-get documents and casting the burden of proof on the vulnerable voter in an exercise that morphed into a test of citizenship. But then, the Supreme Court stepped in, to nudge the EC towards greater transparency, to direct it to include Aadhaar as proof of identity, so that the SIR does not become an exercise of exclusion. Even amid the ongoing SIR ahead of elections in West Bengal, the SC intervention has tamped down the escalating confrontation between the Mamata Banerjee government and the EC — the Chief Minister called off her sit-in after the Court ordered the formation of tribunals to hear appeals against exclusion from voter lists.

Amid the polarisation, then, and in spite of an executive that weaponises its majority, there are countervailing forces, checks and balances. The Opposition needs to make its way by appealing to, and widening these spaces from within, strategically and imaginatively. No-confidence and impeachment motions are a cop-out, and an abdication of that responsibility.