Goa, July 12 -- Former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) S.Y. Quraishi has shared a deeply personal account of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's commitment to safeguarding the independence of the Election Commission of India (ECI), recalling an emotional conversation from 2012 in his forthcoming book, India and I: A Hundred Memories, Not a Memoir.

The episode dates back to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, when then Union Minister Salman Khurshid was censured by the Election Commission for allegedly violating the Model Code of Conduct after promising to increase the Muslim quota in government jobs from 4.5 per cent to 9 per cent if the Congress came to power.

Quraishi wrote that the Commission, after hearing arguments from both...