Late Andhra Pradesh CM YS Reddy Late Andhra Pradesh CM YS Reddy

The appointment of former power secretary V.S. Sampath as an election commissioner in 2009 had raised eyebrows, and his close ties with the then Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy were the subject of a US diplomatic cable later made public by WikiLeaks.

The cable on Sampath's appointment read thus: "Many believe that Reddy fast-tracked Sampath's nomination through the UPA bureaucracy and see in it a sign of the Andhra Chief Minister's growing influence in the party".

A senior IAS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre, Sampath was moved to the Election Commission at the height of a controversy emanating from the then Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami's recommendation to the Supreme Court that Navin Chawla, an election commissioner at the time, be removed from the poll panel. Chawla was accused of being close to the Congress.

The diplomatic cable described Sampath's appointment as a "great hope for restoring the credibility of the commission". It was also mentioned that Sampath, who was then 59, was "carefully chosen in 2009" as he had the requisite age to see through the general elections of 2014.

The cable highlighted that Sampath had the reputation of being honest and decisive though he was perceived to be pro-Congress. The reference to Sampath in WikiLeaks has returned to haunt the officer right in the midst of his standoff with the BJP, which staged a massive protest against the Varanasi returning officer's refusal to allow Narendra Modi to hold a public meeting in the city's Beniyabag ground.

Sampath is the second Chief Election Commissioner appointed by the UPA government to be accused by the Opposition as being biased. The diplomatic cable also pointed to reports of infighting and differences in the Election Commission's top echelons since Chawla's (Sampath's predecessor) appointment as an election commissioner in 2005.

"Chawla has been a political target of the BJP for over three decades. As a young private secretary during Indira Gandhi's 1975-77 state of Emergency, Chawla oversaw the arrests of political opposition, many of whom are BJP leaders today," said the cable.

The cable also talked about flaws in the appointment of election commissioners, of whom the EC has two, discussing how they are selected by the incumbent government unlike the Central Information Commissioner and the Central Vigilance Commissioner, who are picked by a broader panel comprising the Prime Minister, leader of opposition and the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. "Many have argued that biased EC selection process could threaten the credibility of the commission and elections it overseas," the cable said.