3-member Election Commission consists of Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and 2 poll commissioners
Dissent and minority views in Election Commission's orders in cases of Model Code of Conduct violations would not be made public, the poll panel said today, rejecting the demand of Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa. In a statement, the Election Commission said that the dissent notes and minority views will stay a part of records as it is the case now.
"In the meeting of the Election Commission held today regarding the issue of MCC (Model Code of Conduct), it was interalia decided that proceedings of the commission's meetings would be drawn, including the views of all the commission members. Thereafter, formal instructions to this effect would be issued in consonance with extant laws/rules, etc," the poll panel said in a statement.
Mr Lavasa had stopped attending meetings of the 'full commission' to decide on poll code violations over his "minority decisions going unrecorded". He had dissented in at least six of the 11 decisions that the Election Commission took on complaints against PM Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for alleged poll code violations. The two were given a clean chit in all the decisions.
Mr Lavasa, speaking to NDTV this evening, said he was concerned with the decision to not make the minority opinion public and that he would continue to hold his views. "Minority decision in a constitutional body should be made public," he said.
According to the Chief Election Commissioner, only minority views in quasi-judicial proceedings can be recorded in the orders and the decisions on poll code complaints are not quasi-judicial proceedings, so minority views need not be recorded.
"Status quo will be maintained. Dissent will not be made public but would form part of EC records," an official told Press Trust of India.
Referring to Mr Lavasa, the Chief Election Commissioner in a statement on Saturday said the three members of the election body "are not expected to be template or clones of each other, there have been so many times in the past when there has been a vast diversion of views as it can, and should be."
The three-member Election Commission consists of the Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and two election commissioners - Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra. The poll panel's rules express preference for a unanimous view, but also allow a majority decision.
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With inputs from PTI