New Delhi, March 14: The committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday named former bureaucrats Sukhbir Singh Sandhu of Punjab and Gyanesh Kumar of Kerala as Election Commissioners. A notification in this regard was issued on Thursday evening.
In exercise of the powers conferred by section 4 of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 (Act No. 49 of 2023), as per the notification of the Ministry of Law and Justice, the President, IAS ( Appointment of IAS (Retd) Gyanesh Kumar and IAS (Retd) Dr. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu as Election Commissioners with effect from the date they assume office in the Election Commission of India.
Currently, only Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar was in the three-member Election Commission. Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey’s tenure ended last month and Arun Goyal recently resigned from his post. Due to this, two seats in the commission were vacant.
The Election Commissioner is decided by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the leader of the largest party in the Lok Sabha. Last year, by bringing a law, the government had fixed the selection process through this committee.
Earlier, Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary, who was part of the committee, had made public the information about the names decided in the media on Thursday afternoon itself. Chaudhary raised questions on the functioning of the committee. He said that he was not informed before the meeting about which names would be there. Apart from this, the government has majority in the committee.
He said that just a night before the meeting he was given a list of 212 names and just 10 minutes before the meeting he was given 6 selected names. It was impossible for me to know about the integrity and experience of the people named in the list in such a short time. He expressed his objection to the process of finalizing the names and lodged his ‘disagreement note’.
