For most of his 36-year career in India’s bureaucracy, Gyanesh Kumar built a reputation for getting difficult things done.
Now the 62-year-old, who runs elections in the world’s most populous country, faces a rather different challenge: defending how his own institution makes decisions.
It is an unusual position for a bureaucrat who spent decades outside the public gaze, despite being entrusted with some of the Indian government’s most politically sensitive assignments.
For about a year now, Kumar, India’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), has been under intense political pressure over a sweeping revision of the country’s electoral rolls known as the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR.
The exercise, which began in Bihar last year, has since been extended to cover most of India and more than 130 million names have been struck from draft voter lists across 30 states and federally-administered territories – roughly 13% of India’s electorate.
The Election Commission says the exercise is intended to remove duplicate and ineligible entries while ensuring legitimate voters are included. Opposition parties and activists have alleged that it risks disenfranchising eligible voters. Kumar and the commission have rejected accusations that the process is being manipulated for political ends.
Then, this week, the controversy moved inside Kumar’s own institution.
An investigation by The Indian Express, external reported that his two fellow Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders they said had been issued without their knowledge.
The report alleged that the disagreements went into the heart of the SIR – including how people are added to or removed from electoral rolls, changes to voter-registration procedures and access to the database containing hundreds of millions of voters.
The allegations are particularly sensitive for the three-member Election Commission, where disagreements are decided by a majority.
Kumar has not personally responded to the investigation. The BBC has contacted his office for comment.
In a statement issued after the investigation, the commission did not deny the reported disagreements but rejected suggestions of a serious internal rupture, saying differences of opinion were part of normal deliberations and that its decisions over the past year – including on SIR – were ultimately unanimous.
Over the weekend, Kumar, Sandhu and Joshi met and also issued a joint statement addressing some of the issues raised by the investigation. The commission also released a photograph of the three men together.
