Launching a frontal attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre for introducing a Bill in the Rajya Sabha that seeks to exclude chief justice of India (CJI) from a selection committee for the Election Commission, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said the BJP is the biggest threat to the country’s democracy and Constitution.
The proposed three-member committee will pick up election commissioners and the chief election commissioner of India.
Addressing a press conference, Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema said the Narendra Modi Government is capturing important democratic institutions of the country one by one and politicising them.
He said the country is heading towards dictatorship as the Modi Government is continuously and arbitrarily defying the decisions of the Supreme Court with disdain.
“The Central government is overturning whatever decision is taken by the Supreme Court one by one by misusing its majority in Parliament. This mentality is very dangerous for the democracy of the country,” he contended.
The AAP leader recalled a recent Supreme Court decision where the apex court ruled that fair elections under an independent election commission is not possible under a high-level committee appointed by the Central government.
“The prime minister of the country, leader of the Opposition and the chief justice of the Supreme Court should be in that committee. But the Modi Government overturned the decision of the Supreme Court by bringing a Bill in Parliament as part of a conspiracy to capture the Election Commission by replacing the chief justice in the said committee with its own Cabinet minister. This proves that BJP does not want to allow free and fair elections in the country,” he added.
Cheema said this decision is an insult to the constitution of the country, the architect of the constitution Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and all the great freedom fighters of the country, who dreamed of making India a democratic country.
Apart from this, the decision is also an insult to the country’s judiciary and 140 crore people, he added.