In a PIL for complete autonomy to Election Commission of India (ECI) the supreme court has sought assistance from the KK Venugopal, Attorney General of India. The supreme court has directed the advocate of petitioner to furnish the copy of petition to Attorney General - government’s most senior law officer.
The PIL is filed by the Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan appears on behalf ot the petitioner for conferring rule making authority on the ECI to give it power to make code of conduct and election related rules for India in the same way the authority is vested with the supreme court.
Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay is also the spokesperson of BJP and has prayed through the petition that an independent secretariat be provided by the centre and the expenditure of the same to be charged on the lines of Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha Secretariat on the consolidated fund of India.
It was further prayed in the petition that the two election commissioners shall be treated at par in matter of removability with the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). It specified that the process of removal of the election commissioners shall be same as the process of CEC.
Article 324 (5) of the Constitution has been challenged by way of the present PIL. The Article provides that the CEC can be removed by the way of impeachment and the election commissioners can be removed on the CEC’s recommendations. The Article treats election commissioners as regional commissioners.
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