Navin Chawla

New Delhi, Feb. 7 (PTI): The law ministry has released a letter written by former chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami to the President seeking the removal of election commissioner Navin Chawla, even though the Rashtrapati Bhavan had declined to make the document public.

In what may reflect a lack of communication within the government, the law ministry has allowed an RTI request from S.S. Ranawat, a resident of Bhilwara in Rajasthan, for the letter written on January 16 last year.

The Rashtrapati Bhavan had cited the opposition expressed by Chawla, the current chief election commissioner (CEC), to any disclosure as its reason for not making the 93-page letter public.

Gopalaswami had alleged several instances of “partisan behaviour” and “lack of political neutrality” on Chawla’s part. The letter said: “His present conduct seems a part of a continuum of the conduct he had exhibited, of closeness to a certain political formation, during the Emergency a little over 30 years ago and more recently, prior to his appointment as EC (election commissioner), when he received donations for the trusts which he and his family members ran, to the period of the last three-and-a-half years in the Election Commission.”

Gopalaswami had contended that as CEC, he had the constitutional power to recommend Chawla’s removal. The government, however, rejected the recommendation and appointed Chawla as CEC when Gopalaswami retired in the middle of the April-May 2009 general election.

Gopalaswami had accused Chawla of trying to “influence (fellow) election commissioner Dr Quraishi… by spreading stories that Dr Quraishi was supporting the opposite views”. On many occasions, Gopalaswami said, S.Y. Quraishi had confided to him that he was under pressure.

Gopalaswami claimed that Quraishi had once revealed that Chawla had told him: “They are angry with you (Quraishi) not so much because you were instrumental in Sonia Gandhi getting a notice from ECI (Election Commission of India) on her birthday (after her ‘maut ka saudagar’ barb) but for the fact that you sided with the CEC in advancing the elections in Himachal Pradesh.”