The Election Commission on Tuesday decided by a 2:1 majority that all minority decisions or dissenting views will not be made part of the final orders to be issued in cases pertaining to violation of the Model Code of Conduct, rejecting the demand of Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa.
However, the poll watchdog said that the dissent notes and minority views will stay a part of records as it is the case now.
The poll panel said in a statement, “In the meeting of the Election Commission held today regarding the issue of MCC (Model Code of Conduct), it was interalia decided that proceedings of the commission’s meetings would be drawn, including the views of all the commission members. Thereafter, formal instructions to this effect would be issued in consonance with extant laws/rules, etc.”
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Lavasa had recused himself from all MCC related meetings until his demand for inclusion of minority decisions in the final orders of the commission is met. He had dissented in at least six of the 11 decisions that the poll body took on complaints against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for alleged poll code violations. The two were given a clean chit in all the decisions.
Reacting to Lavasa’s demands, CEC Sunil Arora on Saturday issued a statement where he sought to downplay the discord within the poll panel and said the three commissioners are not expected to be clones of each other.
“The three members of the ECI are not expected to be templates or clones of each other. There have been so many times in the past when there has been a vast diversion of views as it and should be,” a statement released by the CEC’s office said.