Congress’s leader in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury announced to the media this afternoon that bureaucrats Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar have been selected for the two open positions in the top panel of the Election Commission of India.
As the poll body gets ready for the next Lok Sabha election, Mr. Chowdhury was a member of the panel that Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to choose two Election Commissioners to support Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar. Amit Shah, the Union Home Minister, was on the panel in addition to the Prime Minister and Mr. Chowdhury.
Following the resignation of Supreme Court member Arun Goel last week and the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey in February, two vacancies in the committee were filled by holding a meeting to choose the ECs.
Sukhbir Singh Sandhu is a retired IAS officer. He was Uttarakhand’s chief secretary at the time. Prior to this, Sandhu held positions as chairman of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), additional secretary, and minister of human resource development. In addition to earning his Master’s in history from Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, Sandhu completed his MBBS at Government Medical College in Amritsar. It has been said that he is also a law graduate.
Gyanesh Kumar is an IAS officer from Kerala cadre. He worked as a secretary in Amit Shah’s ministry of cooperation, according to reports. He had previously worked for the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs as the secretary.
