On March 2, the Supreme Court of India ordered a new format for appointing Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners. As per the SC orders, the appointment will be made by a committee comprising the PM, the opposition leader, and the Chief Justice of India. This brings to memory the case of Navin Chawla who was appointed as an election commissioner in 2005 by then Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Who is Navin Chawla?
Navin Chawla was working as a secretary in the information and broadcasting department before his appointment as an election commissioner. Navin Chawla was considered to be a bureaucrat close to the Gandhi family. Sonia Gandhi’s influence played a major role in getting him appointed as the election commissioner. He further went on to be the chief election commissioner during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
He was about to retire from his regular duties in 2005. According to a report by India Today, he was seen as the next home secretary of Sonia Gandhi’s choice, but he was appointed as the election commissioner instead. In general, an EC appointment is the greatest post-retirement opportunity for IAS officers. It permits people to work for up to six years or until they reach the age of 65, whichever comes first. Navin Chawla completed 65 years of age on 30th July 2009. It is clear that Sonia Gandhi wanted him to head the election commission during the 2009 Lok Sabha election.
Shah Commission’s remarks about Navin Chawla
Navin Chawla was not only closely associated with Sonia Gandhi but, in the past, he had been a trusted officer of Indira Gandhi, during the emergency. In 1977, the government of India appointed a commission headed by the former chief justice of India JC Shah to inquire about all the excesses committed during the emergency period. There were serious remarks against Navin Chawla in the report submitted by the Shah Commission.
During the 1975-77 Emergency, Navin Chawla worked as a private secretary to Kishan Chand, then lieutenant governor of Delhi. It is notable that Kishan Chand later committed suicide because he could not tolerate the so-called humiliation after the Shah Commission’s negative findings about him.
Shah Commission’s report observed about Navin Chawla and his cohorts that they “exercised enormous powers during the emergency because they had easy access to the then prime minister’s house. Their approach to the problems of the period relating to the citizens was authoritarian and callous. They grossly misused their position and abused their powers in cynical disregard of the welfare of the citizens, and in the process rendered themselves unfit to hold any public office which demands an attitude of fair play and consideration for others. In their relish for power, they completely subverted the normal channels of command and administrative procedures.”
Chawla was also found to have used ‘extra-statutory authority in jail issues,’ including the treatment of detainees. He didn’t just tell his master who was going to be arrested; he also instructed him how they were going to be treated in jail. For example, he advocated for the construction of specific cells with asbestos roofs to ‘bake’ some inmates. Kishan Chand miserably revealed before Judge Shah that he was not a free agent and that Chawla used to receive instructions straight from Sanjay Gandhi and that he (Kishan Chand) was simply in the picture to complete certain procedural requirements.
According to an article by BS Raghavan, LP Singh – a member of the commission headed by JC Shah – had said that the report by the Shah Commission “indeed made Chawla unfit to hold any public office and that he deserved to be summarily dismissed from service without any further inquiry or proceedings, invoking the special powers under provisos (b) and (c) of Article 311 of the Constitution.”
This is exactly what Chawla would have faced if the Janata Party administration had not fallen and Indira Gandhi had not returned to power, culminating in the restoration to coveted positions with a vengeance of all those accused by Justice Shah. Besides these remarks, the bureaucrat also has a book based on the life of Mother Teresa to his credit. When Sonia Gandhi became a power centre as the chief of the national advisory council and ran the Manmohan Singh government, in that period of the UPA regime, she appointed this Navin Chawla as the election commissioner who went on to head the panel during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
