Former Bureaucrats SS Sandhu & Gyanesh Kumar Named New Election Commissioners

New Delhi: Former bureaucrats Balwinder Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar were on Thursday appointed as the new Election Commissioners in a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury told the media.

The appointments are the first by the panel reconstituted under Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023, which dropped Chief Justice of India (CJI) from the selection committee to appoint a CEC and ECs.

Apart from Modi and Chowdhury, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was part of the panel, which picked the former bureaucrats  for the two vacant posts in Election Commission of India (ECI), which is expected to announce the dates of the general elections in the coming days.

The Congress leader, however, expressed resentment over the law under which a Union Minister replaced the CJI on the selection committee. “They have the majority in the committee. Earlier, they had given me 212 names, but 10 minutes before the appointment, I was handed over just six names. The government has made such a law to ensure that the CJI doesn’t interfere and the Centre can choose a favourable name. I am not saying that it’s arbitrary but the procedure that is being followed has some lacunae.”

He added that there was no clarity on how the six names – Utpal Kumar Singh, Pradeep Kumar Tripathi, Gyanesh Kumar, Indevar Pandey, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Sudhir Kumar Gangadhar Rahate, all former bureaucrats – were shortlisted.

Notably, the Supreme Court will be hearing a plea on Friday, which said that the Centre could take ‘unfair advantage’ while filling the two vacancies in the ECI following the ‘abrupt’ resignation of Arun Goel ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.