Retired bureaucrats Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu officially took charge on March 15 as the new election commissioners. They were appointed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led selection panel on Thursday.
Chief election commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar welcomed the two new members of the commission, emphasising the significance of the appointment just ahead of the Lok Sabha election 2024.
The Commission also announced on Friday that the dates for the upcoming Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections will be announced tomorrow at 3pm.
Two previous members of the election commission had resigned in the last few weeks, which created vacancies. Anup Chandra Pandey had tendered his resignation on February 14, while Arun Goel quit on March 8 due to “health concerns”. Goel’s sudden resignation, just weeks before the Lok Sabha election, had created a political furore as several reports claimed that he had to exit because of major disagreements with the CEC.
The new appointments created more controversies after the leader of the Opposition and Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury claimed that a list of 212 names were given to him a day before with very limited time to examine the profiles. Another list of 6 names were given to him just 10 minutes before the start of the meeting, the Congress leader further claimed.
The appointments also come at a time when the selection process of the election commissioners has been challenged by the Association for Democratic Reforms and Congress leader Jaya Thakur. Recently, the apex court had said the selection panel should consist of the prime minister, the leader of the Opposition and the chief justice of India. However, the Central government, through an Act passed in December, replaced the chief justice with a cabinet member in the 3-member selection panel. The top court is likely to hear the appeal today.
Who are the new EC members?
Kumar and Sandhu, both 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, belonged to the Kerala and Uttarakhand cadres, respectively.
Sandhu was the chief secretary when Pushkar Singh Dhami became the chief minister of Uttarakhand. Before that, he served as the chairman of the National Highway Authority of India. He also discharged his duties as the additional secretary in the department of higher education in the ministry of human resources development.
Meanwhile, Sandhi had served as the secretary in the ministry of cooperation under Amit Shah. He has also been the secretary at the ministry of parliamentary affairs. He retired on 31 January 2024.
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