New Delhi, Feb 18 (UNI) Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday slammed the government’s “midnight decision” to select Gyanesh Kumar as the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and called it “disrespectful and discourteous”.
On his social media handle X, Rahul Gandhi said, “By violating the Supreme Court order and removing the Chief Justice of India from the committee, the (Narendra) Modi Government has exacerbated the concerns of hundreds of millions of voters over the integrity of our electoral process”.
He further said that he had presented his “dissent note” to Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah during the meeting of the committee to select the next Election Commissioner.
In the dissent note, Gandhi stated, “The most fundamental aspect of an independent Election Commission free from executive interference is the process of choosing the Election Commissioner and Chief Election Commissioner”.
“As the LoP it is my duty to uphold the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar and the founding leaders of our nation and hold the government to account. It is both disrespectful and discourteous for the PM and HM to have made a midnight decision to select the new CEC, when the very composition of the committee and the process is being challenged in the Supreme Court and is due to be heard in less than forty-eight hours,” he said.
It may be mentioned that late Monday night, the government through a notification appointed Gyanesh Kumar as the 26th Chief Election Commissioner of India with effect from February 19.
Moreover, the government has also appointed Vivek Joshi, a 1989-batch Haryana-cadre IAS officer, as Election Commissioner.
