For a former CEC, SY Quraishi doth protest too much against the Election Commission. What's his agenda?

With every passing week, former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi is becoming shriller. Especially after many opposition political parties decided to call for the resignation of current CEC Gyanesh Kumar and Quraishi himself became the go-to guy for unbridled criticism of Kumar. If nothing else, this shrillness may well help sell his latest book, India and I: A Hundred Memories, Not a Memoir, launched in July. Nothing like regular TV appearances to sell your book.

In recent interviews to foreign media, he has made over-the-top allegations against CEC Gyanesh Kumar, and called the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls a “scam”. Among the negative comments he made against Gyanesh Kumar to London-based Pervaiz Alam, a former BBC journalist (why is one not surprised?), Alam put these claims made by Quraishi on social media site X: “He (Gyanesh Kumar) was not even found fit for the Additional Secretary panel. Later he was also found unfit for the Secretary panel.” Quraishi stated that Gyanesh Kumar’s only claims to fame were that he was close to Home Minister Amit Shah, and a key player in the run-up to the abolition of article 370, which gave Jammu & Kashmir its special status, and the setting up of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir after the 2019 Supreme Court verdict.

If Kumar played such a critical role in the abolition of article 370, which was later upheld by the Supreme Court, and also the Ram Mandir, the country owes him a huge vote of thanks, not Quraishi’s denigration. An X handle dug into Quraishi’s past tweets on Gyanesh Kumar when he was appointed, where he apparently welcomed his appointment. I could not locate this tweet myself, but unless Quraishi rebuts it, one has to presume he did welcome Gyanesh Kumar’s appointment in 2024. At that time, we definitely know that Quraishi did not talk about Gyanesh Kumar as Amit Shah’s flunkey.

Neither the CEC nor the SIR process can be beyond criticism. One can certainly say that SIR could have been implemented better with lesser harassment of genuine voters. The question is whether it is right for a former CEC to use such harsh language against a constitutional authority and its head. He calls the SIR illegal and unconstitutional, when it has been conducted eight times in the past, and the Supreme Court, when it was approached, did not find anything wrong in it.

Quraishi finds fault now with Gyanesh Kumar’s appointment through a three-member selection committee in which the PM and Amit Shah were members. Granted, the government side carried the day, as the leader of the opposition was outnumbered 2:1. But wasn’t Quraishi himself appointed to the Election Commission without any consultations outside the Congress party in 2010? He succeeded the controversial Navin Chawla. Sonia Gandhi would surely have vetted his appointment to the Commission before the government announced it. Nobody will believe that Manmohan Singh appointed him all on his own.

In his book, Quraishi mentions an incident where he was attacked by Congress ministers after he had censured then Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid for violating the model code of conduct during the UP elections of 2012. After this, he sent a sharp message to Manmohan Singh through his media advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Harish Khare. Quraishi threatened to go public if this did not stop. At a meeting with Quraishi later, the Prime Minister apparently expressed deep concern, calling the Election Commission the “soul of democracy” and if Quraishi believed that he was behind these attacks, he would step down on “commit suicide”.

We have only Quraishi’s version of events, but assuming this is entirely true, the point is these attacks could not have come at the Prime Minister’s promptings, for real power during UPA was with Sonia Gandhi. If the ministers who criticised the CEC had been encouraged to target him, it would have come from the party side, not the PMO.

In his missive to Harish Khare before meeting up with Manmohan Singh, Quraishi is supposed to have said that “loose talk” against the Election Commission was not right.

But isn’t he doing the same right now, indulging in “loose talk” against the CEC and the Election Commission?

Quraishi seems to be driven by an agenda against both the Modi government and the CEC. It is a pity that the media seems to consider only Quraishi to be an authentic critic of the Election Commission when there are at least a dozen former CECs still alive and kicking.