SC questions Arun Goel's appointment as Election Commissioner, asks for files

The hearing in the case will continue on Thursday.

The five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice KM Joseph said it wants to know if there was any "hanky panky" in the appointment process as Goel was recently given voluntary retirement and then was immediately appointed to the poll body.

Arun Goel's appointment was mentioned by activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan during the hearing of a batch of petitions on the very process.

Bhushan mentioned that Goel, a recently-retired IAS officer, was made part of the three-member Election Commission — besides chief Rajiv Kumar and Anup Chandra Pandey — just after the larger issue came up for hearing last week.

"Arun Goel was, till Thursday, working as a secretary-level officer in the government. Suddenly, he was given VRS on Friday and appointed as an election commissioner," Bhushan said. He was otherwise to retire on Dec 31 at the age of 60.

The court rejected the objections by the government lawyer, Attorney General R Venkataramani, who said it wasn't right to take up individual instances.

"We want to see what is the mechanism. We will not treat it as an adversarial and keep it for our record, but we want to know as you claim that everything is hunky dory... You have time till tomorrow," the court told the government lawyer.

Arun Goel took charge this Monday.

An IAS officer of the 1985 batch from the Punjab cadre, he retired as Secretary, Union Ministry of Heavy Industry, after more than 37 years of service.