Source Credit: The Hindu
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan described Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as having dissented against the Chief Election Commissioner; Pradhan further condemned it as an attempt to create a controversy concerning the working of the Election Commission. Recently, Mr. Rahul Gandhi mentioned dissent notes regarding impartiality and functioning of the Election Commission concerning some recent developments in the electoral process.
According to Pradhan, belittling such a constitutional authority in the name of democracy does great peril, as such utterances create confusion and erode confidence in India's electoral institutions. Gandhi's issue somewhere stirred a huge political din, thanks to dissenting opinions from other political players worldwide on the whole contentious realm. Some leaders uphold Gandhi's allegations; others, including Pradhan, argue that this kind of comment erodes public confidence in the electoral system.
Initiatives regarding the CEC are examples of occasions when any questions regarding the integrity of elections have turned into a weird competition; the other side gets ugly in these exchanges, thus stretching the wedge between the ruling and the opposition parties. These shades of legal opinions would have found their full reflection in a political mobilization, in one way or the other, questioning electoral integrity, but were, instead, an utterly impotent endeavor to hold constitutional authorities to account. What else is left from that? Simple; that sordid episode drifted straight into the political chatter on the credibility of India's electoral machinery.
