New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led three-member committee on Thursday picked bureaucrats Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu as election commissioners (ECs). Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury shared this information with the media after the meeting.
The decision comes days after the resignation of Election Commissioner Arun Goel ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The selection panel, which zeroed in on Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar, includes the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition, and a designated Union Cabinet minister. Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is on the three-member panel in capacity as the opposition member.
Gyanesh Kumar is a retired IAS officer of Kerala Cadre who oversaw the abrogation of Article 370 as head of the Kashmir Division of Ministry of Home Affairs. He played a key role in setting up the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust.
Another top bureaucrat Sukhbir Singh Sandhu is an Officer Uttarakhand Cadre who has held important positions in the Central government, government of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.
Besides the Prime Minister and the Congress leader, Union Home Minister Amit Shah attended the meeting. The Congress leader, however, 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. The Congress leader also said 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,” said Chowdhury.
The Congress leader said he was given 212 names for scrutiny last night. “I reached Delhi last night and the meeting was today at noon. I was given 212 names, how can someone examine so many candidates in a day? Then, I was given six shortlisted names before the meeting. The majority is with them, so they chose the candidates they wanted,” he said.
(With inputs from IANS)
