Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar have been appointed as the new Election Commissioners after a high-level meeting was held earlier in the day chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both the Election Commissioners were appointed after the sudden vacancies created by the resignation of Arun Goyal and the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey.
"One Mr Kumar from Kerala and one Mr B. Sandhu from Punjab have been selected as Election Commissioners," said Congress leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury after the meeting. Chowdhury has also attended the meeting.
Earlier the meeting of the selection committee was scheduled to take place on March 15 at 6 pm but was later rescheduled for today.
The meeting was held at noon after which the names of the nominees were announced.
The process to appoint an election commissioner starts with names suggested based on the recommendation of a search committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary.
Five names are suggested by the search committee to the selection committee headed by the prime minister. The selection committee has the discretion to select any other name apart from those five which are then sent to the President for approval.
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Both the newly appointed Election Commissioners are former officers of the Indian Administrative Services, as per reports.
Gyanesh Kumar is a 1998-batch Kerala cadre IAS officer who served as secretary in the Ministry of cooperation led by Amit Shah.
Sukhbir Singh Sandhu is also an IAS officer from the 1998 batch and served as the chief secretary of Uttarakhand. He has also served as the chairman of the National Highways Authority of India and additional secretary Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development.