7 Dec 2021
Neta·ResumeAppointed Election Commissioner by the President on 31 Aug 2017 (Ministry of Law & Justice announcement) and took over as CEC on 2 Dec 2018 on the retirement of O.P. Rawat, as the senior Election Commissioner. No selection committee existed then. Before the 2023 Act there was no statute on selection: the Union government, by convention, picked senior serving or retired Secretary-rank officers and the President appointed on its advice, with the senior-most EC normally elevated to CEC (as described by the Supreme Court in Anoop Baranwal, 2 Mar 2023).
source ↗Education: B.A. (Hons) and M.A. in English, Panjab University (Hoshiarpur) - per ECI profile
The day her 24-hour campaigning ban took effect, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sat on a dharna at the Gandhi statue in Kolkata, protesting what she and her party described as the Election Commission's unconstitutional decision to bar her from campaigning.
The Election Commission the same week also barred BJP's Rahul Sinha for 48 hours and issued a show-cause notice to Dilip Ghosh, per the same report. No direct, exact-worded quote from Banerjee herself (as opposed to the outlet's paraphrase 'unconstitutional') was found in the source opened.
Here the Commission's action comes first and the response is the Chief Minister's.
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