Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar have been chosen as Election Commissioners to fill up the two vacant posts in the top panel of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
This announcement was made by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Thursday. Chowdhury was part of the panel chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to select two Election Commissioners to assist Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar as the poll body prepares for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
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Chowdhury, while announcing the names of the new poll commissioners, hit out at the Centre over the law that replaced the Chief Justice of India with a Union Minister on the selection committee. “The Chief Justice of India should have been on this committee,” he said, adding that the law brought last year had reduced the meeting to a mere “formality”. “The government is in the majority on the panel. What they want happens.”
The Congress leader said he was given 212 names for scrutiny last night. “I reached Delhi last night and the meeting was today afternoon. I was given 212 names, how can someone examine so many candidates in a day? Then, I was given 6 shortlisted names before the meeting. The majority is with them, so they chose the candidates they wanted,” he said.
The Congress leader said he had given a dissent note, questioning the procedure of selection.
Sandhu and Kumar are retired IAS officers of the 1988 batch. While Sandhu is from the Uttarakhand cadre of IAS, Gyanesh Kumar is from the Kerala cadre.
Sukhbir Sandhu has earlier held key government positions, including the Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand and chairman of the National Highways Authority of India. Gyanesh Kumar has served as secretary in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and the Amit Shah-led Ministry of Cooperation.