Election Commission remains undecided on CM bypolls

West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee and Uttarakhand’s Tirath Singh Rawat face deadlines to get elected to their state legislatures

Election Commission of India: File picture

Pheroze L. Vincent   |   TT  |  New Delhi   |  29.06.21 : The Election Commission remains undecided about when by-elections will be conducted with two chief ministers, Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee and Uttarakhand’s Tirath Singh Rawat, facing deadlines to get elected to their state legislatures.

The EC had in May indefinitely deferred by-elections after concluding five Assembly polls that coincided with the second wave of Covid, and whose conduct amid the pandemic prompted Madras High Court to observe that commission officials should face “murder charges”.

A commission source said on Monday that “no decision” had been taken on conducting the pending by-elections yet, nor had meetings been scheduled to discuss the subject this week.

The Supreme Court had last week refused to accept Covid as an “excuse” for deferring elections and directed the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission to conduct civic polls by September 15 “before the third wave arrives”.

“Covid has become a good excuse in all matters…. We know the reality in these matters; unless and until political parties are ready, elections are not held,” Justice Hemant Gupta, who shared the vacation bench with Justice Aniruddha Bose, observed.

But a senior EC official told The Telegraph: “At the moment, the commission has not taken a decision but it is definitely assessing the situation…. The Supreme Court direction was for a state election commission and has no bearing on us. No meeting has been scheduled on this matter.”

The state election commissions conduct municipal and panchayat polls and are independent of the Election Commission of India.

Un-elected ministers are required to get themselves elected within six months of taking the oath.

Mamata, sworn in as chief minister on May 5 after narrowly losing a contentious election in Nandigram, is expected to contest the necessary by-election from her home turf of Bhowanipore, which a cabinet colleague has vacated for her.

Mamata has also petitioned Calcutta High Court challenging the Nandigram result. In case the court orders a recount and she wins, she will not need to contest a by-election.

The chief minister had recently taken a dig at the Election Commission from a position similar to the apex court’s in the matter of the Tamil Nadu civic polls.

“I came to know that when Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) will give the instruction, then only they (the commission) will hold the by-election. If it is so, then I will request the Prime Minister, clear the by-election,” she said. “Because now, the situation is okay. But if the third wave (of the pandemic) comes, then you cannot do anything.”

Ironically, the Election Commission had in April rejected Mamata’s demand to club the last three of the eight phases of the Bengal polls and minimise the pandemic damage when the second wave was escalating.

The commission, whose autonomy is protected by the Constitution, has not responded to Mamata’s jibe on the Prime Minister’s prospective “instruction”. Nor has chief election commissioner Sushil Chandra responded to a question from this newspaper on the criteria for the conduct of elections during an epidemic.

Also last week, Maharashtra’s state election commission rejected a request from the state government to defer local body polls in five districts, scheduled on July 19, on the ground of the pandemic.

The Bengal BJP, however, has opposed by-elections being held during the pandemic and demanded that Mamata resign.

Seven Assembly seats are vacant in Bengal. Elections were not held in two because of the deaths of candidates; two Trinamul winners died after the polls; two BJP winners quit their Assembly seats to remain MPs; while minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay resigned from the Bhowanipore seat on May 21.

Sovandeb too, therefore, needs to be elected — by November 21 — while finance minister Amit Mitra, sworn in on May 10 after opting out of the polls, faces a November 10 deadline.

In Uttarakhand, where former state BJP president Rawat was appointed chief minister on March 10 after an intra-party struggle against his predecessor Trivendra Singh Rawat, the Congress has written to the Election Commission to clear the air on by-elections.

While deferring the by-elections in Bengal in May, the Election Commission had cited “lockdown/restrictions under Disaster Management Act, 2005, as issued by NDMA/SDMA” — the national and state disaster management authorities.

Although a few restrictions still remain, both Bengal and Uttarakhand have unlocked many public services and commercial activities over the past month. Bengal had 21,580 active cases on Monday — the eighth straight day the count fell — while Uttarakhand’s active cases numbered 2,294.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had last year sought election to the legislative council after being sworn in. When the polls were postponed because of the pandemic, Uddhav had requested governor B.S. Koshiyari to appoint him to a vacant “nominated” seat, only to be refused.

Uddhav then wrote to Modi, after which Koshiyari asked the Election Commission to notify the election to the vacant legislative council seats.

In its press note then, the commission had said: “In cases of former Prime Ministers Sh. P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991 and Sh. H.D. Deve Gowda in 1996; and several chief ministers of states (like Sh. Ashok Gehlot, chief minister Rajasthan in 1991; Smt. Rabri Devi, chief minister of Bihar in 1997, Sh. Vijay Bhaskar Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1993, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh & 4 ministers in 2017, and chief minister of Nagaland in 2017), commission conducted by-elections to fulfil similar constitutional requirement. Commission noted that this has been the consistent practice in the past.”