Why Salman-CEC fought
There was a time when Law Minister Salman Khurshid and Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi were best of friends. They were at every party thrown by their common friends and at their own houses.
But suddenly they fell out. Now it transpires that Salman Khurshid dashed Qureshi’s hopes of getting a lucrative post-retirement assignment.
Qureshi wanted to carve out a post-retirement job and set up an institute to train a cadre for conducting elections which is now a round the clock exercise. But Qureshi wanted this training and educational institute be outside the Election Commission. To top it all, Qureshi wanted to become its president for life time. Though, later the tenure was brought down to five years. But still Qureshi wanted the institute to be registered as a separate society under the cooperative society. He proposed that the funds running into Rs 50 crores be given by the government.
The Law Minister Salman Khurshid who is the nodal minister of the legislative and legal affairs, wanted that the entire commission should consider Qureshi’s proposal. There were serious differences amongst the members as Sampath and H S Brahma wanted the institute to be part of the EC itself. When the EC sent the proposal to the finance ministry, it sat on the file and later said that a separate society cannot be permitted to be set up outside the Commission since it is a 100% government funded institute.
It was stated that Sampath wanted that the institute should be an extension of the EC itself and CEC should be its ex-officio chairman. Thus S Y Qureshi will be without a post-retirement job and Salman Khurshid is smiling.
