 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we have another crisis in the election commission with Mr. Lavasa, one of the election commissioners having said he is not going to attend any further meetings of the election commission because he thinks it is pointless to do so. Poranjoy, this is unprecedented in the history of the election commission that one of the election commissioners is saying there is no point in attending any further meeting. You are absolutely right. To the best of my knowledge, I have spoken to a number of people. I recently interviewed and it's available on NewsClick, a former chief election commissioner, Mr. Naveen Chawla, who also said it's unprecedented. He said it's very, very disturbing. And I spoke to a legal expert who didn't wish to be quoted. He spoke on condition of anonymity. He said something like this has never been seen before. So it is completely unprecedented that an election commissioner should write to the chief election commissioner saying, I will not be attending any further meeting. Why? Because you are not recording my dissension. Now, exact words. This I am here, this letter or the news about this letter was quoted by NDTV for the first time. The news also appeared in Hindustan Times. He says, I am being forced to stay away from the meetings of the full commission since minority decisions are not being recorded. My participation in the deliberations of the commission become meaningless since my minority decisions go unrecorded. And he goes on to say, I might consider taking recourse to other measures aimed at restoring the lawful functioning of the commission in terms of recording minority decisions. This is amazing. And this is what Mr. Ashok Lavasa, election commissioner, former secretary minister of environment and forest, Indian administrative service says, my various notes on the need for transparency in the recording and disclosure of all decisions, including the minority review, have gone unheeded, forcing me to withdraw from participating in the deliberations. This has started with the model code of conduct, complaints about the prime minister, complaints about senior BJP leaders. The president of the party, Amit Shah. The president of the party, Amit Shah, and appears that this is where Lavasa seems to have differed from the other election commissioners. As we know the decision of the election commission not to record, shall we say, anything adverse against the prime minister and Mr. Amit Shah, the president of the party, has already been criticized widely in the media and other places. The opposition parties have criticized them, but leaving that aside, rightness or the wrongness of the decision of the election commission, in this case it appears that Mr. Lavasa wanted to record his note of dissent on these decisions. It's already been there in the press for some time that one of the election commissioners disagreed with these views of the election commission and his view was not recorded. According to the note that we have seen that has been issued by the chief election commissioner, he has said this should not have been brought into public view. This should have been kept secret and after the election we were going to have a group to discuss all of this, but it doesn't take away from the fact that the chief election commissioner and the other person, other election commissioner, refused to record a note of dissent. Now, this is unbelievable in a committee. You know, it's truly unbelievable. It's truly unfortunate and recently, earlier in the day, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandra Babu Naidu, he went on records saying that once again, you know, here the credibility of an institution like the election commission of India has once again been terribly eroded. You've asked a number of questions. So let me go step by step. First, let's look at what the chief election commission of India, Mr. Sunil Arora, has said in his statement. It's a very hurriedly drafted statement and obviously they are typographical errors because he seems to have dictated a note hurriedly to his tenographer. So what is called dictated but not read. Yes, so incidence has become incidence. Divergence has become diversion. But what Mr. Sunil Arora has claimed, that this entire controversy according to him is unsavory and avoidable at a time when, you know, the last phase of elections are due to take place on Sunday the 19th of May. Now, what he's saying, that by and large everything, it should not have happened. Interesting. He said the three members of the election commission of India are not expected to be template or clones of each other. It should be one another but I'm not getting into the grammar. There have been so many times in the past where there has been a vast, again, diversion. I mean, I think he means divergence of views as it can and should be. But the same largely remained within the confines of the election commission of India and after the mission of office, unless appearing much later in a book written by the concerned ECs or CECs. And he says. What he's basically saying, Lavasa could have written a book. Why did he go? Yeah, I mean he's, Mr. Lavasa is due to succeed him as the chief election commissioner in the coming year. And then it says that I have personally never shied away from a public debate whenever required, but there is a time for everything. So what he's saying, he's criticizing indirectly Mr. Lavasa as far as the timing is concerned. Now, the second part of what you ask me is really a big question. quasi-judicial proceedings and deliberations on the model or code of conduct are not supposed to be quasi-judicial. So according to Mr. Swilord, all right, this is an earlier statement or he has been attributed in the media saying that only in the case of a quasi-judicial kind of a decision are you, what should I say, obliged to record a dissenting voice or a dissenting note. And since decisions pertaining to the model code of conduct, including six instances of allegations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and, you know, army and a whole lot of things and Amit Shah, it is very, very, I spoke to a legal expert and he said, we have to try and understand what does the letter of the law says and what is the convention. The fact is, look, it's simple courtesy if nothing else that you record and you've never had a situation where an election commissioner who will become the chief election commissioner stops attending meetings because he clearly says it's futile because my minority view is not being recorded. It's absolutely I'm saying is that my views are not being accepted, which is fine because you're always the right to do so, but at least record them. And if you're not recording them, then posterity, I'm participating in a body whose decisions I don't agree with and I can never claim that I did not agree with this decision. So if you see it another way, you know, foreign judge, I'm sure you've attended meetings in your life. Have you ever had a situation where the committee chairman says, I will not record your views. And I would say that it is not a matter of law. It's a matter of simple right of member of a committee to have this decision recorded. I don't know why it requires not even to bring in etiquette and convention or decency or quasi-judicial. You mean to say that all the committee meetings that they take place, they have to be only quasi-judicial for recording the dissent. This is a, I don't remember at any point of time this being raised that if it's a quasi-judicial body only then we have to record the dissent. I thought minutes of the meeting are minutes of the meeting. That means they must reflect what's been discussed. That's correct. And at the end of the day, the law is very clear that when the election commission became a three-member body, this had been anticipated. Then what if there is lack of unanimity? And it was clearly laid out that each of the three members have an equal voice and the majority view will prevail. Although, as Mr. Navin Chawla and others have pointed out, the protection given to the institution or the post of the chief election commissioner is different from that on the issue today. That's correct. It's about removal impeachment and so on and so forth. The chief election commissioner is much more protected as a species than the other commissioners are. But it does not mean when you accept the principle of a majority decision that the minorities views will not be recorded. It is undemocratic at the end of the day. Yes, so I think it's another institution as Chandrababu and I do said today and various other people. It's a very sad day. It's a very sad day. That election commission, which in spite of all the limitations it might have had in how it is formed, how it's selected and so on, but has done a reasonably good job of keeping Indian elections a very complex process, free and reasonably fair. Provid elections in India are the biggest of its kind. You may or may not agree about the quality of democracy, but you can't deny the fact that we are the world's largest. I mean, there are 700, 900 million individuals who are eligible, who have been eligible to vote in the ongoing elections, which ends on Sunday and off which more than two thirds, at least in the previous election in 2004, actually exercised their franchise. You know, we used to say it's run by bureaucrats, but these are different. I mean, these bureaucrats have been constitutionally empowered and you can criticize the bureaucracy for being rule bound and less than innovative. But we, every single Indian was proud of the fact that in more than one sense, our election system, despite its size, despite its complexity, despite the complaints, despite the controversies, was superior to even countries like the US, to live alone, you know, countries, many, many other developing countries. Regretfully, history, I guess, will remember that Narendra Modi government for having undermined this institution as well, among the various other institutions that have been undermined in recent years. Thank you very much, Parunja, for being with us and discussing what seems to be another crisis of the Indian state. May I briefly intervene and bring in, before we conclude, a little personal touch. Mr. Lavasa's daughter, a young lady called Avni Lavasa, she is a deputy commissioner Ladakh, as in her position as district election officer. On the 2nd of May, filed a first information report against the president of the Bharti Janthapati in Jammu and Kashmir, Ravindranayana, and a sitting member of the Legislative Council, Vikram Randhawa, accusing them that they were trying to bribe journalists in the invitation card they had put in notes to file articles which were in favour of the Bharti Janthapati. Now, these allegations have been denied. There were also allegations against army officers casting votes on behalf of the Jawans. That too has been denied. But somewhere along the line, I think, like father, like daughter, in the eyes of some people, she has her stature as a young IHS officer seems to have gone up. In spite of the fact that we seem to have a, shall we say, a less than, what shall I say, straightforward government today, which is dealing with the elections and what is supposed to be the model code of conduct. If the prime minister and the president of the Bharti do a certain set of things, I guess we cannot be surprised at some of the, shall we say, far-flung districts showing a different metal, shall we say, as well. So, on that note, let us hope that the Indian electorate will have exercised its judgment in a way that hopefully some of the damage that is happening to the institutions can be remedied. This is all the time we had for NewsClick today. Thank you very much. Do keep watching NewsClick.