It is surprising that the Election Commission has told the Supreme Court that it lacks powers to act against the misbehaving politicians and candidates contesting in the election and Supreme Court judges have expressed surprise and said that they would examine the powers of the Election Commission.
Election commission is a constitutional body created by the Constitution to conduct free and fair elections. Election Commission is a constitutional body as much as the judiciary is .
When the Election Commission has the responsibility to conduct free and fair elections as expected by the constitution of India, it obviously means that it has inherent powers to ensure the necessary conditions for achieving it’s objectives.
In recent years, judiciary has become a very powerful body in the country ,mainly because the judges are frequently using inherent powers given to them by the constitution. It now appears that there is no ceiling for the powers of the judiciary.
Judiciary has been able to use it’s inherent powers due to the massive support that it gets from the people for it’s attempts to enforce rule of law and discipline.
In the same way, the Election Commission would get massive support from the people if it would act strongly and meet it’s objective of conducting free and fair elections by ruthlessly punishing the wrong doers.
Former Chief Election Commissioner T.N.Seshan attempted to use his inherent powers and he is praised even today by the people. Those who preceded him and succeeded him do not seem to emulate his example.
Today, Election Commission has become weak because Election Commissioners have become weak. The Election Commission has allowed itself to become a punching bag for the reckless politicians. This is a setback for electoral democracy in India which should not be allowed to continue.
N.S.Venkataraman