New Delhi: Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna on Tuesday recused from hearing a batch of pleas challenging the exclusion of the CJI from the panel meant for selecting the chief election commissioner and election commissioners.
At the outset, the CJI, who was sitting on the bench with Justice Sanjay Kumar, told the advocates appearing for the PIL petitioners that he couldn’t hear the pleas now.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and lawyer Prashant Bhushan said the previous bench headed by Justice Khanna had passed interim orders in the matter. Justice Khanna, who has become the 51st CJI after former CJI D Y Chandrachud demitted office, said the cases would now be listed before another bench after the winter break.
Several persons, including an NGO have challenged the validity and sought a stay on the operation of Section 7 of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, which excludes the CJI from the panel that picks the CEC and ECs.
His predecessor, Justice DY Chandrachud, had ruled that the CJI, along with the prime minister and the leader of opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, will be on the panel to choose the CEC and ECs. The central government, however, later took the Parliament route to instead require the selection panel to have a PM-nominated minister, besides the PM and LoP.
Pleas were, thus, filed against this new law that effectively excluded the CJI. A prime argument is that the new selection panel has a 2:1 ratio in favour of the government leaving it imbalanced.
