A master stroke or a fell stroke?

The constitution allowing for 'more than one commissioner' in the EC without stipulating any specific number, nothing would seem wrong in principle to be adding two more commissioners to the present strength, making it four in all. Were the revamping of the commission done before the controversy raged over the preparation of voter list on the plea that the conduct of national election is being a daunting task with the passage of time, no eyebrows would have been raised by it.

But that is not the issue here; what is of intense concern in the present case is the circumstances and background against which the new appointments have been made and these do render the intent and motivation behind the changes made at the top of the commission suspect in the public eye.

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Leaving the nation in suspense and great confusion since the January 4 HC directive requiring the EC to revise the existing electoral role instead of having a new one and to hold the long pending meeting with his colleagues to decide a course of action accordingly, the CEC bided for time to see the new appointments made ensuring his majority in the decision-making process. With that accomplished, he is now making a move for a full meeting of the commission.

Two pertinent questions arise from the rather nontransparent handling by the CEC: first, why couldn't a meeting be held by him with the two commissioners in more than a couple of months to try and thrash out the differences so as to present a consensual image of the EC thereby retaining public trust in the statutory body? Secondly, we now hear about preferring an appeal to the HC directives. Why wasn't the move contemplated to run the full legal course before resorting to the appointments? After all that has happened, there is likely to be an impression that the EC and the HC are in some kind of a conflict.

We have had enough of it. Let's draw a curtain now on all sorts of controversy about the working of the EC lest it cast a deep shadow on the credibility of the conduct of the next general election.