By K Raveendran
Over 70 Opposition members of the Rajya Sabha have opened a new constitutional front against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, submitting a fresh notice for his removal on grounds they describe as “proven misbehaviour”. The move comes after an earlier attempt was rejected and is centred on allegations including partisan enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, voter-roll concerns, public denunciation of a recognised political party and conduct said to be unbecoming of a constitutional authority.
The effort is almost certain to fail in numerical and institutional terms. A Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only through a process comparable to that for a Supreme Court judge, requiring a level of parliamentary consensus the Opposition does not possess. That high threshold was designed to protect the Election Commission from routine political pressure. Yet the same safeguard becomes ineffective when the core dispute is not about numbers alone but about public confidence in the neutrality of the referee.
That is the deeper significance of the notice. The Opposition may not be able to remove Gyanesh Kumar, but it has succeeded in turning his continuance into a question about institutional credibility. A constitutional functionary need not be legally removed to be politically and morally diminished. Once the fairness of an election authority becomes a matter of sustained parliamentary challenge, the damage travels beyond the individual. It enters the public imagination, where every administrative decision begins to look suspect, every disciplinary silence appears selective, and every procedural justification sounds like protection of the powerful.
Kumar’s position is especially vulnerable because election administration depends on trust more than coercive authority. Courts can issue binding orders. Governments can deploy executive power. The Election Commission’s authority rests on the public belief that all parties stand before it on equal terms. When that belief weakens, elections may still be conducted, machines may still function, polling stations may still open, and results may still be declared. But the democratic meaning of the process begins to erode. The question then shifts from whether votes were counted to whether citizens believe the contest was fair.
The framers of the Constitution anticipated danger from political interference, which is why they gave the Chief Election Commissioner exceptional protection from removal. But they also assumed a public culture in which constitutional office-holders would feel bound by restraint, shame and institutional memory. They imagined that a person placed in such office would be conscious not only of legal immunity but also of moral obligation. That assumption belonged to a different age. It rested on a belief that elite conduct would be moderated by conventions even where statutes were silent.
Those conventions have frayed. Across institutions, the letter of the law is increasingly treated as a shield against accountability rather than a floor for ethical conduct. The argument is no longer whether an office-holder should appear neutral, but whether critics can prove misconduct beyond a nearly impossible threshold. This reversal is dangerous. Constitutional morality cannot survive if public officers act as though everything not punishable is permissible. A democracy cannot run on technical legality alone; it requires habits of fairness, distance from power and visible independence.
The President’s role in such a process is also part of the problem. Formally, the President acts within a constitutional framework. Politically, however, the office has become inseparable from the parliamentary arithmetic that produces it. When the ruling party or ruling coalition commands decisive influence over presidential election and parliamentary procedure, expecting an adverse decision against a favoured constitutional appointee becomes unrealistic. That does not mean the President’s office is legally partisan. It means the architecture of accountability is too dependent on actors who are themselves products of political majorities.
This is where the Opposition’s move, despite its predictable failure, serves a democratic function. It creates a record. It forces the allegations into parliamentary space. It denies the comfort of silence to an office-holder accused of bias. It tells voters that institutional neutrality is not a decorative principle but a live constitutional demand. The danger, however, is that repeated failed motions may also normalise futility. If every challenge ends in procedural burial, citizens may conclude that constitutional safeguards exist only on paper.
The larger issue is the design of appointments and removals. India cannot rely indefinitely on personal virtue in high office. The appointment of election commissioners has already become a contested matter because control over the selection process determines the character of the institution. A system in which the executive enjoys decisive influence over appointments, and then benefits from the decisions of those appointees, produces a perception problem even before misconduct is alleged. That perception deepens when removal is practically impossible except with the consent or acquiescence of the same political ecosystem.
New safeguards are therefore not a matter of partisan convenience but democratic necessity. Appointment to the Election Commission should be insulated from executive dominance through a genuinely balanced selection committee, wider scrutiny, transparent criteria and recorded reasons. Removal should remain difficult enough to prevent harassment, but the process should include an independent preliminary inquiry mechanism capable of assessing complaints before they are reduced to parliamentary theatre. The country needs a middle path between frivolous impeachment and complete impunity.
There is also a need for enforceable conduct rules for constitutional authorities. Neutrality cannot be left to self-certification. Public communication by the Election Commission, application of the Model Code of Conduct, handling of complaints, voter-roll revisions, deployment decisions and disciplinary responses should be governed by transparent protocols. When a recognised political party is criticised, warned or penalised, the reasoning must be precise and consistent. When voter deletions or revisions are undertaken, the process must be auditable. When complaints are dismissed, the grounds must be clear enough to withstand public scrutiny.
The crisis around Gyanesh Kumar is therefore not merely about one officer. It is about the collapse of inherited assumptions. The Constitution was written for a republic in which institutions would be defended by people who valued their own reputations as custodians of public trust. The present political climate has shown that reputation is no longer a sufficient restraint. Loyalty is rewarded, defiance is punished, and silence is often safer than independence. Under such conditions, constitutional design must evolve.
Opposition MPs may not remove Kumar. The ruling establishment may continue to stand by him. The President may not act in a manner that unsettles the balance of power. Yet the episode has already exposed a fault line that cannot be ignored. When the credibility of the election authority becomes dependent on the goodwill of those it is supposed to regulate, democracy enters a dangerous zone. The answer is not merely to replace one Chief Election Commissioner with another. The answer is to build a system in which no Chief Election Commissioner can afford to appear beholden, protected or politically useful. (IPA Service)
