Gyanesh Kumar to succeed Rajiv Kumar as Chief Election Commissioner: Who is he?

Gyanesh Kumar will succeed Rajiv Kumar as the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). He was also appointed as the Election Commissioner, along with Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, in the Election Commission of India on Thursday. The poll panel is currently headed by CEC Rajiv Kumar.

The law ministry issued a notification announcing the appointments on Thursday. The development came just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.

The post of Election Commissioner fell vacant after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey on February 14 and the sudden resignation of Arun Goel on March 8. Meanwhile, the tenure of Rajiv Kumar as the Chief Election Commissioner of India will end in February 2025. He had taken charge as the CEC on May 15, 2022 and had succeeded Sushil Chandra.

Now, in 2025, Kumar will become the CEC as per norms as soon as Rajiv Kumar's term ends.

Who is Gyanesh Kumar?

Gyanesh Kumar is a 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the Kerala cadre. The 60-year-old retired as secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation, which comes under Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on January 31, 2024. Before that, he served as the secretary in the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs.

During his tenure in the Union home ministry, Kumar oversaw the abrogation of the Constitution's Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. He was the Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs during the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.

In 2014, as the resident commissioner of Kerala in Delhi, he was deputed by the state government to evacuate 46 nurses stuck in Erbil in war-torn Iraq. The operation was successful with the evacuation of 183 Indians, 70 from Kerala, from Iraq. 

Kumar is an IIT-Kanpur graduate. He did a BTech in Civil Engineering. He also holds a postgraduate degree in economics from the Harvard University. Tap here to read more about him