New Delhi:

Gyanesh Kumar assumed charge Wednesday morning as the new Chief Election Commissioner.

Mr Kumar replaces Rajiv Kumar in the role and will oversee the conduct of nearly two-dozen elections, state and presidential, over the course of his four-year term. The new CEC is an ex-IAS officer from the Kerala cadre, and earlier served in the Home Ministry, under current Home Minister Amit Shah. Among his key responsibilities were the drafting of a bill that scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.

In his first remarks after taking charge, Mr Kumar said, “The first step for nation-building is voting. Therefore, every citizen of India who has completed 18 years of age should become an elector and should always vote. The Election Commission was, is, and will always be with the voters.”

Mr Kumar’s appointment – the notification was issued late last night – was made amid controversy after Rahul Gandhi and the Congress objected to his nomination.

Mr Gandhi is part of a three-member panel that was tasked with picking the new CEC, but the Congress leader submitted a dissent note instead, objecting to Gyanesh Kumar’s nomination despite a challenge – to the constitution of the panel – that is pending in the Supreme Court.

READ | Gyanesh Kumar Appointed New Chief Election Commissioner

The top court will hear those arguments later today.

In essence, the contention is the committee – which at present consists of the Prime Minister, a member of the union cabinet (to be nominated by the PM), and the Leader of the Opposition – is biased towards the ruling party, and impinges on the Election Commission’s neutrality.

NDTV Explains | Why Gyanesh Kumar’s Pick As Poll Chief Sparked Row

On Tuesday Mr Gandhi posted a sharp attack on X, in which he slammed the centre’s “midnight decision” to appoint Gyanesh Kumar as the next CEC, calling his nomination a ‘violation of the Supreme Court order (by) removing the Chief Justice of India from the selection committee”.

READ | “Midnight Decision Disrespectful”: Rahul Gandhi Note On Poll Chief Selection

“During the meeting of the committee to select the next (Chief) Election Commissioner, I presented a dissent note to the PM and HM that stated: ‘The most fundamental aspect of an independent Election Commission… free from executive interference… is the process of choosing the Election Commissioner and Chief Election Commissioner,” Mr Gandhi had said.

During the meeting of the committee to select the next Election Commissioner, I presented a dissent note to the PM and HM, that stated: The most fundamental aspect of an independent Election Commission free from executive interference is the process of choosing the Election… pic.twitter.com/JeL9WSfq3X

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) February 18, 2025

“By violating the Supreme Court order and removing the Chief Justice of India from the committee, the Modi government has exacerbated the concerns of hundreds of millions of voters over the integrity of our electoral process,” Mr Gandhi said on X.

READ | All About Gyanesh Kumar, New Chief Election Commissioner

The reference was to an earlier order by the Supreme Court that said the PM, the LoP and the Chief Justice of India should be on the selection committee. To circumvent that ruling the central government later rushed through a bill to replace the Chief Justice.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has announced that Dr Vivek Joshi took office this morning as the new third member of the panel. Dr Joshi is a 1989-batch IAS officer from the Haryana cadre.

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New Delhi:

Gyanesh Kumar – appointed as an Election Commissioner in March last year – is likely to become the next Chief Election Commissioner of India, replacing the outgoing Rajiv Kumar sources told NDTV Monday evening. If his appointment is confirmed, Mr Kumar will oversee conduct of the Bihar Assembly election later this year and the polls in Bengal, Assam, and Tamil Nadu next year.

Mr Kumar, a 1988-batch IAS officer from Kerala cadre, is the senior of the two commissioners on the three-member panel that was led by Rajiv Kumar till he demitted office this morning. The other commissioner on the panel is Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, an officer from the Uttarakhand cadre.

Mr Kumar’s nomination, though, has not yet been ratified.

The opposition Congress – represented on the selection panel by Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha – has objected to what it has said is a rush to name the new CEC.

READ | “Can’t Operate In Ego”: Congress On New Poll Body Chief Selection

The party has pointed out the Supreme Court will this week hear a challenge to the 2023 law governing selection of the CEC, which critics say gives the ruling BJP control of the process; under that law a three-member panel – the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, and the LoP will decide.

Who Is Gyanesh Kumar?

Mr Kumar, 61, was earlier part of the Union Home Ministry.

Among his key responsibilities was helping to the draft the bill that scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 and split the former state into two union territories.

He was then Joint Secretary (Kashmir Division) in the Home Ministry.

A year later, as Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry, Mr Kumar also handled documents relating to the Supreme Court case about the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.

Sources said Mr Kumar is known to be close to Home Minister Amit Shah; he retired from the civil service in January last year as Secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation, which is also led by Mr Shah.

Prior to that he also served as Secretary in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. And, in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, he was posted to the Defence Ministry.

Mr Kumar holds a B.Tech degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Engineering in Kanpur, and has also studied Business Finance from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India. Additionally, he has also studied Environmental Economics from Harvard University.

Rajiv Kumar Retires

Exiting CEC Rajiv Kumar stepped down this morning.

In his farewell speech Mr Kumar touched on a number of issues, including remote voting mechanisms for NRIs and migrant workers, biometric authentication to cast votes, and non-disclosure of votes (to guard against post-poll violence) received by each candidate at any given polling station.

READ | Remote Voting For NRIs, AI, Biometrics: Outgoing Chief’s Wishlist

Mr Kumar also underlined the need for “financial transparency” in managing poll expenses and campaign promises and action against “fake narratives” spread via social media. He also spoke about Artificial Intelligence, or AI, which he declared could “revolutionise (the) conduct of elections”.

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