Bureaucrats Sukhbir Sandhu, Gyanesh Kumar Appointed as New Election Commissioners

New Delhi: The two vacant posts in the top panel of the Election Commission of India will be filled up by bureaucrats Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar, said Congress’s leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury to the media on Thursday afternoon. Sukhbir Sandhu is from Punjab and Gyanesh Kumar is from Kerala.

Chowdhury was part of the panel chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to select two Election Commissioners to assist Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar. This meeting was also attended by the third member of the panel, Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The Congress leader, Chowdhury, criticized the Centre and said, “The Chief Justice of India should have been on this committee.”

According to him, the law brought in last year has reduced the process to a mere “formality”. “The government is in the majority on the panel. What they want happens,” he added.

The Congress leader said he was given 212 names for scrutiny last night. “Then, I was given 6 shortlisted names before meeting. The majority is with them, so they chose the candidates they wanted,” he said.