If the government announces the appointment of Navin Chawla as the next Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) before Parliament opens, this is manna from the heavens for the BJP. The party wants to keep the issue alive and hopes to agitate Parliament in a big way on the issue. It also plans to approach the courts on the matter, and has collected all manner of material on why Chawla is unsuitable for the job. This includes information on land allotted to various trusts run by Chawla to even information on how the guards at his house were paid for by the Delhi Vidyut Board long after he ceased to head that organisation.
According to those in the know, one of the charges levelled against Chawla by the current CEC is that, when the dates for the last assembly election in Punjab were being fixed, Chawla let the Congress party know and that’s how Chief Minister Amarinder Singh was able to rush through some pre-poll sops.
