The pages of India's electoral history vaguely recall the name of V S Ramadevi. Her colleagues and officers who knew her describe her as "nice", "intelligent", "humane", and "empathetic", but little else is known about her contributions to the administrative machinery of India. Although largely forgotten now, Ramadevi made history by becoming the first and only woman to be appointed as the chief election commissioner (CEC) of India on November 26, 1990. She holds the record for the shortest tenure, as her term ended on December 11, 1990, lasting only 16 days. “Some people were not even ready to recognise her as an election commissioner since it was for a very short time and more like a stop-gap arrangement,” says S K Mendiratta, former legal adviser to the Election Commission. Ramadevi’s short stint as CEC began on the recommendation of then prime minister V P Singh upon the death of her predecessor, R V S Peri Shastri. At that time, she was the secretary of the legislative department in the Ministry of Law and Justice. Mendiratta recollects that Ramadevi shared a close friendship with Shastri and would often visit the election office during the latter’s tenure to get his advice on drafting various acts “In particular, they would discuss the 73rd amendment to the constitution on gram panchayats, which was being drafted at that time,” says Mendiratta, adding that it was during the course of these meetings that he happened to first encounter Ramadevi. “I thought she was extremely intelligent and a very good draftsman,” he says. When Singh brought in Ramadevi as CEC, the idea was to soon make her permanent. As per Mendiratta, despite it being a stop gap arrangement, Ramadevi took complete command immediately after her appointment. “Even during that short period, we had a meeting of all the chief election officers,” he remembers. Consequently, the law ministry moved the file for her appointment as a regular CEC, and Singh cleared it shortly. When the file reached the president for approval, it had to be held for a while since he was away at that time. However, before the president could return and approve Ramadevi’s appointment, the government changed and Chandra Shekhar came to power. Mendiratta goes on to narrate that Chandra Shekhar appointed Subramanian Swamy as the law minister, and the latter withdrew Ramadevi’s file from the president’s office. He sent a different proposal, that of appointing T N Seshan. Thereafter, Seshan was appointed as the 10th CEC of India on December 12. He remained in office for the next six years and brought in some of the most groundbreaking electoral reforms in the country. With Seshan’s appointment, Ramadevi’s brief encounter with the election commission came to an end. “Perhaps it was just fate. Although she was well suited for the role, most senior officials in the commission welcomed her appointment as well,” says Mendiratta. Ramadevi’s career in the administrative apparatus of the country, though, still had a long way to go. From the election commission, she went back to the law ministry, from where she retired. Soon after retiring, she went on to hold the post of the secretary general of the Rajya Sabha in July 1993. Once again, she was the first woman to hold this post. P P K Ramacharyulu, who was then a section officer in the Rajya Sabha secretariat, remembers her as an “efficient” and “humane” woman who “took several welfare measures for the secretariat employees”. Ramacharyulu, who is currently the secretary general of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, admits that he had very brief interactions with Ramadevi, but recollects that she brought in some important measures. Chief among them was providing air conditioning in all the offices of the Rajya Sabha secretariat. Modernisation of the secretariat by encouraging large-scale computerisation and creating new posts for officers were among some of the other initiatives she undertook. After Rajya Sabha, Ramadevi held the post of governor in Himachal Pradesh from July 1997 to December 1999, and then that of the first and only woman governor of Karnataka between December 1999 and August 2002. Apart from donning multiple senior administrative roles, Ramadevi also co-authored a book with Mendiratta titled How India Votes: Election Laws, Practice and Procedure, which was published by LexisNexis in 2000. She died of cardiac arrest in December 2013 at the age of 79. “I am not even sure if we can technically consider her to have been a CEC in a constitutional sense, given that she was just temporarily in charge and her permanent appointment was not notified,” says S Y Quraishi, another former CEC. “Although I would have been happy had she been CEC for a full term,” adds Quraishi. “One of my greatest grievances is that despite being such a great democracy, we have never had a woman CEC,” he laments.
