Union Ministry of Cooperation ex-Secretary and top bureaucrat Gyanesh Kumar has been named as the new election commissioner along with former IAS officer S S Sandhu.
Their names were picked by a panel chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that met on Thursday in Delhi. Kumar presided over a host of ground-breaking initiatives in the cooperation ministry during his tenure.
No wonder, Kumar called his short tenure at the Cooperation Ministry as the most satisfying part of his long career. “You are able to impact lives of thousands of farmers here”, said Kumar at the farewell dinner thrown in his honour by the Sahakar Bharati in India Habitat Centre.
It bears recalling that the two vacancies were created in the Election Commission after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey in February and the surprise resignation of Arun Goel, recently just ahead of Lok Sabha polls 2024.
Kumar is a 1988-batch IAS officer from the Kerala cadre who worked in the union ministry of cooperation.
He retired as the secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation on 31st January 2024. Earlier, he also served as the secretary in the Ministry of Parliamentary affairs.