Assuming the role of an appellate authority, the Election Commission today ordered the returning officer of the Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh to consider afresh nominations of two Congress candidates he had rejected.Responding to the complaints of the Congress candidates, Harendra Agarwal and M M Shukla, the EC directed the RO, R P Pandey, to consider all ‘‘relevant matters with due and deliberate care and pass such appropriate order in his quasi-judicial capacity as he may deem fit.’’Thus, even as it acknowledged that the RO scrutinised nominations in a quasi-judicial capacity, the EC assumed the power to entertain appeals against his decisions.This, despite the fact that the law does not confer any such appellate authority on the EC nor even the courts as its object is to avoid interruptions to the election process.The EC’s direction to the RO to reconsider his rejection of the Congress candidates flies in the face of the general principle that when somebody exercises quasi-judicial powers, nobody can act as an appellate authority without an express provision to that effect in the law concerned.It is only on executive matters such as the actual polling or the counting of votes or the declaration of results, the EC is empowered to review or overrule the decisions of the RO.This is borne out by Section 66 of the Representation of People Act, 1951 which provides that the EC can interfere with the functioning of the RO when the counting of votes is over and he is all set to declare the results. The EC may then, for whatever reason, direct the RO to put off the declaration of the results.Section 66 of the Act says: ‘‘When the counting of the votes has been completed, the returning officer shall, in the absence of any direction by the Election Commission to the contrary, forthwith declare the result of the election in the manner provided by this Act or the rules made thereunder.’’This provision cannot be stretched by the EC to roll back the quasi-judicial decision taken by the RO in Lucknow on June 19 rejecting the nominations of both the Congress candidates on account of deficiencies in their papers.If the RO’s decision was indeed erroneous, as alleged by the Congress party, the only remedy available in law is that the aggrieved candidates can file election petitions in the Allahabad High Court after the declaration of results.The EC instead intervened and, after reviewing the papers scrutinised by the RO under Section 33 of the Act, directed him to consider afresh the nominations of the two Congress candidates. The EC’s action is violative of several Supreme Court verdicts insulating quasi-judicial decisions from any extraneous interference. For instance, in the context of film censorship, the apex court held as follows in Union of India vs K M Shankarappa (2001): ‘‘To permit the executive to review or revise an order of a quasi-judicial authority would be a travesty of the rule of law.’’
