Gyanesh Kumar: Chief of polls

Illustration: SREEJITH R. KUMAR

Gyanesh Kumar, who took over as the 26th Chief Election Commissioner of India earlier this week, comes to the top position with the image of a man who delivers with a smile.

People who have interacted with him during his various stints in the government recall an affable bureaucrat always welcoming with a cup of ‘Kahwa’ (spiced green tea).

Mr. Kumar is also known to be a bureaucrat “thorough with his paperwork”, and “ready to burn the midnight oil”. During his tenure in the Union Home Ministry, he headed the Jammu and Kashmir desk and played a key role in policy implementation after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into the two Union territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. He was also given the responsibility to formulate the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill by the Narendra Modi government.

During his five-year tenure in the Home Ministry, he was involved in the setting up of the ‘Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust’, which was another key focus area of the Modi government. “This is how he gained the trust of Union Home Minister Amit Shah,” a source said.

Mr. Kumar would also be one of the longest serving CECs with an uninterrupted tenure of nearly four years till January 2029. This, combined with his expertise in doing spadework for sensitive legislation, is likely to be used by the government for implementing the key electoral reform of holding simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies.

Two Bills, which aim to achieve One Nation One Election — ‘The Constitution 129th Amendment Bill, 2024’ and the ‘The Union Territories Laws Amendment Bill, 2024’, were introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 17 last year after the Union Cabinet accepted the recommendation of a high-level committee on the issue headed by former President Ramnath Kovind. A Joint Committee of Parliament is examining both the Bills.

Mammoth exercise

If passed, the Bills will allow simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies in 2034 if the five-year cycle of the legislature is not broken by early dissolution. As the CEC, Mr. Kumar and his successors will have to lay the groundwork for this mammoth exercise to fructify.

The Election Commission had earlier flagged that there was a need for a lead time for the production of Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT), plans for their storage and maintenance, and administrative requirements to roll out simultaneous polls.

The importance of Mr. Kumar’s tenure during this key period can be gauged from the fact that he was both the first Election Commissioner and the first Chief Election Commissioner to be appointed under the new law, the ‘Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023’.

The Opposition has claimed that the process followed under this law gives dominance to the ruling party in the selection process.

A 1988 batch Kerala cadre officer of the Indian Administrative Services, Gyanesh Kumar retired as Secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation on January 31, 2024.

After completing his B. Tech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, he studied Business Finance from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts and Environmental Economics from Harvard University.

Stints in Kerala

He has worked in the Government of Kerala in various capacities as sub-collector of Adoor, managing director of the Kerala State Development Corporation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Municipal Commissioner of the Corporation of Cochin, MD of Kerala State Cooperative Bank, District Collector of Ernakulam, Secretary of Goshree lslands Development Authority, MD of Trivandrum Airport Development Society and Resident Commissioner of Kerala House in New Delhi.

As Secretary to the Government of Kerala, he has handled diverse departments such as Finance Resources, Fast Track Project, Public Works Department; Modernising Government Programme, and Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs.

At the Centre, he has worked as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, Joint Secretary and Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Secretary in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation.