By IANS
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday said it was planning to move a fresh petition against Election Commissioner Navin Chawla before Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami after Gopalaswami told the apex court that he was empowered to initiate action against fellow commissioners.
The BJP along with the Samajwadi Party Tuesday withdrew from the Supreme Court its petition seeking the dismissal of Chawla.
The withdrawal, explained a senior BJP leader involved in framing it, was caused by Gopalaswami’s affidavit before the Supreme Court.
Hearing the petition, the Supreme Court allowed these parties to withdraw their plea after Gopalaswami said that he had rejected their petition earlier because it was addressed to the President of India and not to him personally.
The two-judge bench of Ashok Bhan and V.S. Sirpurkar noted that at this juncture they were not deciding whether the chief election commissioner (CEC) had the power to act against fellow election commissioners on his own or on the basis of a complaint made to him.
The BJP implicitly supported the CEC position when the judges declared that the CEC would be free to adjudicate a petition against fellow election commissioners as per provisions of the law.
The bench had asked the Election Commission counsel to file an affidavit detailing the CEC’s stand following an oral submission last week that the official was of the view that he was constitutionally empowered to initiate suo motu action or act on a complaint against a fellow election commissioner.
BJP leaders said, “we now have to just change the first page and address it to the chief election commissioner instead of the president. All the other pages stating the reasons for moving such a petition and the annexures documenting our reasons for lacking confidence in the impartiality of Chawla will remain intact.”
But the BJP did not say how soon such a petition would be moved.