New Delhi,Nov 24,2022: A five-judge Constitution bench of Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions seeking a direction for an independent selection panel for appointments of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) & Election Commissioners (ECs).
A five-judge constitution bench of the Top Court, headed by Justice K M Joseph, today reserved its order, after hearing the detailed arguments and submissions from the batch of petitioners filed by Prashant Bhushan, Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and others, and also from the Centre.
The petitioners had claimed before the Supreme Court that the appointments were being done as per the whims and fancies of the executive, and thereby they demanded an Independent selection panel for appointments of the CEC and ECs.
The five-judge Constitution bench, of the Top Court, led by Justice Joseph and also comprising Justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy and CT Ravikumar, had heard from all the respective parties.
Supreme Court perused the file related to Arun Goel’s appointment as an EC, and asked the Centre if the file was cleared in “haste” and in a “tearing hurry”.
The Centre had filed the reply today, after complying with the Apex Court’s yesterday’s order, asking it to file the same as it wanted to know as to what kind of process it had followed in appointing Goel as the EC.
During the course of the hearing today, the Centre had a tough time to convince the SC that they have followed all the rules, statute and guidelines, while appointing the former IAS officer, Arun Goel as the EC. “We have followed all the rules, regulations, statute and guidelines in appointing him (Arun Goel). There is no violations in it,” R Venkataramani, the Attorney General (AG) of India, Top law officer representing the Indian Government, told the Supreme Court.
