Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu will today take charge as Election Commissioners. Both were appointed election commissioners yesterday by the selection panel chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government on Thursday notified the appointment of ex-bureaucrats Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu as election commissioners, hours after prime minister Narendra Modi-led high-powered committee sat down to fill the two vacancies in the Election Commission of India which, prior to the new appointments, only had Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar.
The appointments were necessitated due to the suddenresignation of Arun Goel from the ECI; Goel stepped down on March 9. At the time of his resignation, there was already a vacancy on the three-member panel in the form of Anup Chandra Pandey, whose term ended in February. Goel's resignation came at a time when the poll body was gearing up to announce the schedule of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The filling up of the two vacancies, therefore, paves the way for the ECI to declare the schedule.