New Delhi: Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had written to the Cabinet Secretary, and not Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, as per a Right to Information (RTI) reply obtained by India Today.
The reply, dated October 19 in response to an RTI application filed on September 24, confirms that the letters — one from Sandhu and the other from Joshi, both dated July 29 — reached the Cabinet Secretariat.
The two letters were logged on July 30, and the Cabinet Secretary forwarded them to Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) officials and the CEC’s office by August 5.
However, the contents of the letters remain undisclosed due to a technicality.
The Cabinet Secretariat has withheld the Commissioners’ 10-page letters, two pages of replies and two pages of file notings as payment of a Rs 28 fee is pending.
According to a newspaper report, Sandhu and Joshi had objected to a July 28 work-allocation order and wrote to the Cabinet Secretary, calling it a violation of rules. The two Commissioners also made it clear that the changes were made without their knowledge.
The new allocation was subsequently set aside.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) addressed the issue through a press release on September 26.
“The letter to the Cabinet Secretary was not related to any policy matter of the Commission or IT division but related to working of an officer on deputation to ECI. The work re-distribution orders issued by the concerned officer were not actually implemented after the orders of the two Commissioners and the oversight over the IT division by the DEC was never actually withdrawn,” ECI said.
It’s not yet clear what exactly the two Commissioners wrote and what were their exact complaints.
However, the RTI reply to India Today’s queries is the first official document in the controversy, and confirms that the letters exist, the date they were written, and where the Cabinet Secretary’s response went.
