AN advocate on the panel of counsels for the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the Supreme Court has resigned saying his values “are not in consonance” with the body’s current functioning.
“I have found that my values are not in consonance with the current functioning of the ECI, and hence I withdraw myself from the responsibilities of its panel counsel before the Supreme Court of India,” Advocate-on-Record Mohit D Ram wrote in his letter to EC. Ram had been on the Election Commission’s panel since 2013.
His resignation comes soon after the Supreme Court rejected the Election Commission’s plea to gag the media from reporting oral observations of judges.
The ECI had approached the top court against the Madras High Court’s comment that the poll body was singularly responsible for the Covid surge in the country and should probably be booked for murder for not stopping election rallies in the last two months. The comment was not in its final order.
The Supreme Court said though the high court’s remarks were harsh and the metaphor inappropriate, it did not seek to attribute culpability for the COVID-19 pandemic in the country to the ECI.
According to a report published in the Indian Express, the poll panel’s plea in the Madras High Court to gag the media from reporting oral observations of judges and its subsequent Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court against the Madras High Court’s “murder-charges” remark were not unanimously approved by the Commission.
One of the Election Commissioners, Express reported, strongly objected to the contents of both the affidavit filed in the Madras High Court and the SLP.
