Why Gyanesh Kumar's Appointment As Poll Chief Sparked Row: Explained

Gyanesh Kumar, who was named as an Election Commissioner last year, has been appointed the next Chief Election Commissioner of India, replacing the outgoing Rajiv Kumar. Mr Kumar will oversee the conduct of the Bihar Assembly election later this year and the polls in Bengal, Assam, and Tamil Nadu next year. He took charge as the new poll chief this morning.

Mr Kumar's appointment came in a late-night development on Monday, within hours after a meeting of a three-member panel consisting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi. However, it has sparked a row as Mr Gandhi did not approve of the appointment.

Row on Gyanesh Kumar's appointment explained

The appointment of Mr Kumar as the poll chief was done based on the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners (ECs) under the 2023 law. According to these rules, the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners will be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a selection committee consisting of PM Modi as the Chairperson, a cabinet minister nominated by the PM - Amit Shah, and the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha.

However, the law was challenged in the Supreme Court as the three-member panel allowed the Centre a dominant role.

The top court was set to take up a hearing on a "priority basis" on February 19.

Due to this, Mr Gandhi, who was present in the meeting, had opposed Mr Kumar's appointment and asked the government to postpone it. However, the Centre planned to press on regardless, saying that halting the process would mean leaving the key post vacant.

After Mr Kumar's appointment, the Congress leader gave a dissent note saying the meeting was meaningless as the new law has been challenged in the Supreme Court.

"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. 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 wrote in a post on X.

He added, "As the LoP, it is my duty to uphold the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar and the founding leaders of our nation and hold the government to account. It is both disrespectful and discourteous for the PM and HM to have made a midnight decision to select the new CEC, when the very composition of the committee and the process is being challenged in the Supreme Court and is due to be heard in less than forty-eight hours."

Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale also took a dig at the Centre, calling Mr Shah "India's new Chief Election Commissioner".

"Congratulations to Sh Amit Shah on becoming India's new Chief Election Commissioner. The nation is confident that under your able leadership, the goal of reducing ECI to a wing of BJP will be successfully achieved," he said, adding that the BJP would not succeed in West Bengal despite the appointment.

Who is Gyanesh Kumar

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

The new Chief Election Commissioner was a part of the Union Home Ministry earlier and had helped draft the bill that scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 and split the former state into two union territories.

He has also served as the Joint Secretary (Kashmir Division) and the Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry.