Caesar's wife should be above suspicion - or perhaps not ?

The story so far - The election commissioner, Mr. Navin Chawla, attracted opposition from 205 members of Parliament when appointed. It was alleged that he could not be non-partisan. The Times of India carried a report:

A Times Now investigation has... found that two trusts floated by Navin Chawla, a member of the Election Commission, received funding of lakhs of rupees under MPLADS from various Congress MPs.

A petition, seeking his removal, addressed to the then President APJ Abdul Kalam, was not acted on. This led to the petitioners approaching the Supreme Court seeking a direction that the petition be forwarded to the CEC. This petition was subsequently withdrawn on the basis of an affidavit filed by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in the Supreme Court. In the affidavit, the CEC claimed that he had authority to, suo moto, recommend the removal of the election commissioner. He quoted the unanimous decision of a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of 14th July 1995 (4 SCC 611) where the Judges stated :

That the Election Commissioners could be removed on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner did not make them subordinate to him but only ensured their independence of the political Executive. The Chief Election Commissioner, in any case, could not recommend their removal out of whim or caprice and had to exercise his power with reason and responsibility.

At that time, the Additional Solicitor-General had objected to the statement of the CEC and contended that only the Centre could take action against the election commissioner. The Supreme court reserved judgement on the correctness of the CEC's position. A report on the events is here.

The CEC has, after due process, now recommended the removal of the election commissioner. The government has rejected the recommendation. This now leads to a constitutional impasse. Clearly, this needs to be referred to another Constitution Bench. This goes against the earlier order which seemed to indicate an interpretation favouring the reverse.

At a time like this, when serious efforts need to be made to protect the integrity of the constitutional intent, we have the leading English newspaper in the country worried about the "timing" of the action of the CEC. Ignoring its own coverage, and missing the point of constitutional impropriety - the editorial does not once refer to validity or otherwise of the arguments made by the CEC for the recommendations - the editorial laments the timing of the report in the light of the forthcoming elections.

It seems that a society gets not only the politicians it deserves, but also the newspapers it deserves.