Arrest of SEC Lal raises fresh controversy in Maharashtra

Conflict between Maharashtra state election commissioner Nand Lal, who was released on Friday morning after spending a night in jail, and the state legislative body has once again raised the issue of need to codify the privileges of legislatures.

After spending a night in Arthur Road jail, Nand Lal on Friday challenged the legislature’s decision to punish him before the Bombay High Court. Talking to media his foremost reaction on the incident was outcome of “personal vendetta” which the Chief Minister turned on.

The Maharashtra legislative assembly on Thursday approved a resolution, sentencing the former IAS officer and the present election commissioner to two days ‘civil custody’ for failing to appear before the House Privileges Committee. The committee considered it a case of breach of privilege against him.

The committee had summoned Lal on January 16, seeking a reply on the allegation that he breached state assembly’s privilege by his order in 2006 that elections to the local bodies shall be conducted by election commission, not the state government.

Lal instead of appearing personally before the House Privileges Committee had sent a written unsigned reply. The note was not receive by the committee as it was not signed and so passed a resolution on Thursday recommending civil custody for his absence.

Lal was arrested on Thursday from his office and sent to jail for two days, but released on Friday morning. The reason for not completing two complete days was described by jail officials that one sunset and one sunrise counted as two days and so he was released on Friday morning. A Vidhan Bhavan official said, “He was sentenced to two days simple custody and not to 48-hour simple custody.”

In reply to an allegation made by Lal that CM had sent officials to try and persuade him to retain Latur as a general constituency, Vilasrao Deshmukh said he had never mounted pressure on state election commissioner to reserve the Latur Lok Sabha seat for the Scheduled Castes. The allegation against me is baseless, as I had never contested for the Lok Sabha, Deshmukh added.

To a question on finding him accused of breach of House privilege, the Election Commissioner pointed out that failing to appear before a privileges committee was not a breach, rather his choice whether to appear or not.

Although the petition is to be heard next Tuesday, and whatever the decision comes on the incident, it was undoubtedly once again raised a long time awaited question on what constitute the privileges of the legislature.

Constitutional experts feel the exercise of such power to take action for breach of privilege would discourage bureaucrats from taking decisions fearlessly and independently. Instead it would have been better for the government to approach the courts to sort out the dispute.

To a query about the debate, which rises sometimes on the demarcation of Election Commission of India, an expert put a light on the Maharashtra fresh confrontation between state assembly and election commissioner by saying that status of state election commissioner and Election Commission of India are two different subjects.

The EC of India is a constitutional body that ensures the conduct of free and fair elections to legislative assemblies, the Lower House, and the President. While the State Election Commissions in contrast are subjected to the jurisdiction of the states as they include bureaucrats and their role is limited to conducting elections to civic bodies and panchayats.