The seat of Andhra Pradesh State Election Commissioner looks like a musical chairs game now. Yes, this whole incident started when the ruling party opted the violent route to make the local body polls anonymous as their Chief Minster Jagan Mohan Reddy took these polls prestigious.
Later, former State Election Commissioner Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar took severe charges on the accused and due to the COVID-19 effect, he decided to postpone the local body polls. This vented out the Chief Minister and he issued an overnight ordinance to remove Nimmagadda as SEC by reducing the tenure of his post and appointed former Justice Kanagaraj in his place.
Later, High court, on the petition of Nimmaggada, said that Jagan’s government’s ploy is anti-constitutional and ordered them to appoint Ramesh as SEC. So, Jagan’s government filed a counter-petition in Supreme Court challenging the High court’s decision.
Here is a silver lining for Jagan’s government as High court cannot directly appoint Nimmagadda as SEC and on the other side, the AP government halted the process terming the orders issued by High court as ‘Invalid’. As high court already ordered to remove Kanagaraj from SEC post, Jagan came forward with a new plan.
If the supreme court issues stay on the current petition, the AP government will appoint a new election Commissioner other than Nimmagadda and Kanagaraj. It will be retired IAS officer Manmohan Singh who can be appointed by the old rule book other than the new ordinance brought into force by the AP government.