‘Rejection of motion to remove CEC an assault on Parliamentary democracy’

New Delhi: The INDIA Bloc took its battle over electoral integrity to the Constitution Club in New Delhi on Wednesday, denouncing the rejection of their motion to remove Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar as an assault on Parliamentary democracy and warning that the fight was far from over.

Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, flanked by leaders from seven Opposition parties, said, “What happened is extraordinary.” The motion had been thrown out at the very first gate no inquiry ordered, no charges examined, no floor debate permitted. Singhvi’s core grievance was procedural as much as political. He said that when nearly 200 elected representatives collectively move a removal notice, the presiding officers of Parliament are obliged, at a minimum, to give written reasons for rejecting it. Neither Speaker Om Birla nor Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan did so. Both issued identical one-line bulletins citing a “careful and objective assessment” and left it there, he added.

The India Bloc is now weighing a legal challenge in the Supreme Court. The question of who holds the Election Commission accountable, they insist, cannot go unanswered.

The motion itself, filed on March 12, carried the signatures of 130 Lok Sabha members and 63 Rajya Sabha members, for a total of 193, making it the first such impeachment attempt against a sitting Chief Election Commissioner. The charges were serious, which included partisan conduct, deliberate obstruction of fraud investigations, and the mass removal of genuine voters from electoral rolls under the cover of the SIR exercise, particularly in West Bengal and Bihar.

TMC’s Derek O’Brien added to the Opposition’s frustration with two words: “No reason given.” Sagarika Ghose from TMC, RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha, AAP’s Sandeep Pathak, and NCP’s Sharadchandra Pawar were also present. It is a political decision dressed in administrative language, they echoed.

Congress’s Jairam Ramesh reminded that the previous Rajya Sabha Chairman, Jagdeep Dhankhar, had stepped down in July last year shortly after he admitted an Opposition petition.