Special Intensive Role

Efforts to clean voter rolls through the Special Intensive Revision made Gyanesh Kumar a constant political target, as reform collided with mistrust and Opposition resistance

- By KAUSHIK DEKA

Gyanesh Kumar's arrival at Nirvachan Sadan in February 2025 came with an institutional redesign. As the first chief election commissioner appointed under the reworked 2023 law, one that quietly clipped judicial influence from the selection panel, his elevation itself became a political flashpoint. The Opposition saw in the new system a tilt toward executive dominance. The government described it as a rationalisation. Kumar—a veteran bureaucrat who had long mastered the art of surviving shifting constitutional weather—insisted that the Election Commission remained independent. However, it was clear that his tenure would be measured less by proclamations and more by whether he could rebuild trust in a political climate allergic to consensus.

The voter roll clean-up Kumar initiated in Bihar appeared to the Opposition as yet another tactic to advantage the ruling BJP in the state polls