The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday, March 13, agreed to hear on March 15 the petitions challenging the appointment procedure of Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, which dropped the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel of Election Commissioners.
According to the Live Law report, the petitions, moved by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Dr. Jaya Thakur (general secretary of the Madhya Pradesh Mahila Congress Committee), were mentioned before a Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, MM Sundresh and Bela M Trivedi.
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This comes after the Election Commissioner Arun Goel's resignation as well as the likelihood of a high-level selection panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi filling the impending vacancies in the Election Commission by March 15.
The petitioners have filed interlocutory applications seeking to direct the Union to immediately appoint a new member of the Election Commission in accordance with Anoop Baranwal's decision (2023), where it was directed that appointments to the posts of chief election commissioner and election commissioners should be made by the president based on the advice tendered by a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the Chief Justice of India.