NEW DELHI: Sanjay Kumar, the Deputy Election Commissioner who headed the Election Commission of India's Electoral Rolls and IT divisions and signed the order for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, was repatriated to his parent AGMUT cadre on August 24, according to a Department of Personnel and Training order cited by the portal Legend Officers.
The repatriation was proposed by the Commission itself, and cited personal grounds, the report said. The text of the order was not independently available.
Kumar's exit came weeks after Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi wrote separately to Union Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan on July 29, flagging a work allocation order issued by Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg that they said concentrated electoral roll powers centrally instead of leaving them with state level officials, as The Pioneer has reported citing an RTI reply obtained by activist Commodore Lokesh K Batra (retd).
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File notings in that RTI reply, reported by The Indian Express on October 23, show the Cabinet Secretariat had only proposed on August 3 to seek Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's opinion on the complaint. By August 4, it had instead decided to simply acknowledge the two Commissioners' letters without further action, a decision Somanathan's office confirmed in writing on August 5. There is no record of the Cabinet Secretariat following up with the CEC after that.
Hindustan Times and The Hindu identified Kumar as the officer who oversaw the Commission's Electoral Rolls and IT wing and signed the SIR order, in reports on October 3 and between October 11 and 17 respectively.
The two outlets also reported that after Kumar's exit, files related to the contested work allocation order began routing through Garg, the officer the two Commissioners had complained about. The Commission's own statement on September 26 had said Garg's order was never implemented.
The Pioneer could not independently confirm any link between Kumar's repatriation and the Commissioners' complaint. The Commission has not issued a public statement on the reshuffle, and no Election Commission docket showing the complaint was still active on August 24 was found in the material reviewed.