Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a high-powered panel on Thursday to fill in the two vacant posts of Election Commissioners.
The posts fell vacant after Arun Goyal tendered his resignation this month and the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey. Currently, Chief Election Commissioner Rajeev Kumar is the only one among the Election Commissioners in the Election Commission of India.
The process to fill in both the posts has been accelerated ahead of the Lok Sabha polls as the meeting of the selection committee which was earlier scheduled to take place on March 15 at 6 pm has been rescheduled for today.
The meeting will be held at noon and the names of the nominees are likely to be announced by the end of the meeting.
The process for the appointment of election commissioners begins with names suggested based on the recommendation of a search committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary.
The search committee suggests five names to the selection committee headed by the PM. However, the selection committee can consider any other name apart from those five names. The names are then sent to the President who approves them. Earlier, the Chief Justice (CJI) also had a role in this process.
Ahead of the meeting, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wrote a letter to the Law Ministry seeking details of short-listed candidates along with their "dossiers".
In a letter sent to the Secretary, of the Legislative Department, Rajiv Mani, the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha asked him to send him details of shortlisted candidates for the post of Election Commissioners along with their bio-data.
Chowdhury, who is part of the panel for selection of ECs, has asked the official from the Law Ministry to follow the procedure for appointment of other top officials, including CIC and Information Commissioners, besides that adopted for appointing the Central Vigilance Commissioner.