Countering Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s sustained charge that the Election Commission (EC) is biased in favour of the Narendra Modi government, BJP leader Anurag Thakur targeted the Congress over three Chief Election Commissioners (CECs) in the past switching to politics after their terms were over.
“Ramadevi ji, M S Gill, T N Seshan – which party appointed them as Election Commissioners and which party did they end up joining? They have misused the Election Commission, given big postings … It is Rahul Gandhi’s attempt to attack the democracy of India again and again, to weaken it, to mislead the people and create a situation in the country like in Bangladesh and Nepal,” Thakur said.
V S Ramadevi
Appointed the CEC on November 26, 1990, Ramadevi was the first woman to head the poll body. It was the V P Singh government, which enjoyed outside support from the BJP and the Left, that made her the CEC after the death of her predecessor R V S Peri Shastri. At that time, she was the secretary of the legislative department in the Ministry of Law and Justice.
However, by the time she took charge, V P Singh had already lost majority support in the Lok Sabha after the BJP pulled out, and he was on his way out. This cut short Ramadevi’s stint, and her term ended on December 11, 1990, lasting just 16 days.
Subramanian Swamy, who became the Union Law Minister in the Chandra Shekhar government that followed, withdrew Ramadevi’s file from the President’s office. And sent the proposal to appoint T N Seshan as CEC. The Chandra Shekhar government was backed by the Congress at the time.
Seshan thus became the 10th CEC of India on December 12, 1990, while Ramadevi went back to the Law Ministry, from where she retired. Soon after retiring, she became the Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha in July 1993. Once again, she was the first woman to hold this post.
After this Rajya Sabha stint, Ramadevi was named the Himachal Pradesh Governor, and served in the post from July 1997 to December 1999, under the I K Gujral-headed United Front government, that had informal support of the Congress.
After Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Prime Minister of the first BJP-led government, Ramadevi was named the Governor of Karnataka — the first woman to hold the post — and served from December 1999 to August 2002.
She died of cardiac arrest in December 2013 at the age of 79.
T N Seshan
Seshan remains one of the most high-profile CECs the country has seen, giving the EC the formidable reputation it continues to enjoy. Remarks such as that he “eats politicians for breakfast” meant Seshan was hardly out of news during his term as the CEC from December 12, 1990, to December 11, 1996.
However, the Kerala born-official’s main contribution remains the electoral reforms he ushered in.
Before coming to the EC, Seshan had served in many bureaucratic positions, including as secretary to the Atomic Energy Commission and joint secretary at the Department of Space. But in the EC, he came into his own, enforcing the authority of the poll body to counter booth-capturing, allurement to voters, and election violence. He introduced a list of 150 “malpractices” during elections, including the distribution of liquor, bribing voters, a ban on writing on walls, and the use of religion in election speeches. He introduced voter ID cards, the Model Code of Conduct, and enforced a limit on poll expenses.
Seshan managed to achieve all this despite his running feud with the Narasimha Rao government due to his radical style of functioning. In 1993, after the Rao government promulgated an Ordinance under Article 342(2)(3) of the Constitution to provide for two ECs and appointed M S Gill and G V G Krishnamurthy to these posts, Seshan challenged the move in the Supreme Court, claiming it was aimed at curbing his powers. The court dismissed his petition, saying, “The concept of plurality is writ large on the face of Article 324, clause (2) whereof clearly envisages a multi-member Election Commission comprising the CEC and one or more ECs.”
During the 1995 Bihar elections, Seshan grabbed the headlines when, to curb booth capturing and violence, he ordered massive reshuffles of district magistrates and deployed the Central Armed Police Forces. So famous did he become that a miffed Lalu Prasad, then the Bihar Chief Minister and the RJD, labelling him a “raging bull”.
After retirement too, Seshan didn’t hang up his boots and, in 1997, contested for the post of President against K R Narayanan. Narayanan, fielded by parties in the United Front government and Congress, and backed by the Opposition BJP, won one of the most one-sided polls ever, polling 9,56,290 votes against Seshan’s 50,361. Seshan had the support of the Shiv Sena and some Independent MLAs, but almost all parties rallied behind India’s first Dalit candidate for President.
In 1999, Seshan contested the Lok Sabha elections against the BJP’s L K Advani on a Congress ticket from Gandhinagar. He lost by 1.88 lakh votes.
Seshan died in Chennai on November 10, 2019.
M S Gill
Gill succeeded Seshan as the CEC in 1996. A bureaucrat since 1958, he retired from the poll body in 2001. It was during his tenure that the EC introduced Electronic Voting Machines.
After retirement, Gill joined the Congress and represented Punjab in the Rajya Sabha from 2004 to 2016, marking two successful terms as a member of the Upper House. In this period, he held the portfolios of Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports and Minister of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
When Gill was made minister in 2008, Prakash Javadekar of the BJP criticised it, saying that appointing a person who had occupied a constitutional post as a minister was a wrong precedent, as it would appear to be a reward for his past work as CEC. The BJP suggested later during Gill’s ministerial term that a law be made to prevent the immediate appointment of people who occupied independent constitutional offices to political posts.
On April 26, 2010, the former CEC had to contend with the sarcastic comments of many Rajya Sabha colleagues as his was the nodal ministry that coordinated with the DDA and the Delhi government for the organisation of the Commonwealth Games of 2010. As charges of corruption and delays flew thick and fast, Gill had to face barbs in Parliament.
At the time, The Indian Express reported that a discussion in the House on his ministry’s functioning saw the BJP’s Prakash Javadekar say Gill was far more effective in the EC, when all political parties were in awe of him. His new avatar as sports minister, Javadekar added, failed to even scare the “IPL-wallahs”. The Samajwadi Party’s Kamal Akhtar wondered how the 75-plus minister had got charge of the ministry, though he might have hardly ever played a game, including gilli-danda. Gill replied that he had played the latter and other games.
The former minister and CEC passed away in October 2023.