Staying Firm in the Eye of a Political Storm

Ever since CEC Gyanesh Kumar-led poll body has taken up the revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, the 61-year-old ex-bureaucrat is in the line of fire of the Opposition parties. Archis Mohan reports

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Mid-February this year, when the Centre announced that Gyanesh Kumar will be the country's 26th Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), the Congress took to social media to describe him as Union Home Minister Amit Shah's "right-hand man." While Congress did not elaborate, its allegation left Kumar's friends and colleagues bemused. They pointed out that Kumar, a 1988-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre, had a good working equation with both the Congress and Left leaders in Kerala.

As an associate of Kumar told this newspaper, the Congress probably based its social media post on his stint as the Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), headed by Shah. At the MHA—between 2018 to 2021—Kumar looked after the Jammu & Kashmir Division, helped draft the J&K Reorganisation Bill and contributed to the process of Parliament repealing provisions of the Constitution's Article 370.

In the same stint, Kumar worked for setting up the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

For almost a month now, ever since the ECI notified conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar's electorate on June 24, the 61-year-old retired bureaucrat is in the eye of another political storm. INDIA bloc parties, including the Congress and its other allies, have accused him of doing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government's bidding. The SIR has been termed as an exercise intended to disenfranchise the marginalized. It is an insinuation those associated with the election machinery, particularly in Bihar, refuse to accept.