Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar will take over as Election Commissioner today

Newly appointed Election Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu will assume their posts today i.e. on Friday. On Thursday, the election panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed him as the Election Commissioner.

Hours after a high-powered committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi met to fill two vacancies in the Election Commission of India (ECI), the government on Thursday appointed former bureaucrats Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu as Election Commissioners. Issued notification to do so. Before the new appointments, the only Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) was Rajeev Kumar.

The appointments were necessitated by the sudden resignation of Arun Goyal from the Election Commission, who resigned on March 9. At the time of the resignation, there was already a vacancy in the three-member panel in the form of Anoop Chandra Pandey, whose tenure ended in February. Goyal's resignation comes at a time when the electoral body is preparing to announce the schedule for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Therefore, filling up the two vacancies paves the way for the ECI to announce the schedule.