EC rejigs work, new officer to oversee ECINet functioning

NEW DELHI: The Election Commission has reallocated work among its deputy election commissioners (DEC) and directors-general in view of the recent appointment of DEC Prakash Rajpurohit. DG (IT) Seema Khanna, who heads the division that manages the ECINet portal and application, will now put up all files regarding the IT/ICT and grievances divisions under her charge through senior DEC Pawan Kumar Sharma.Sources in the commission said Khanna – whose name cropped up after Indian Express reported on Sept 23, 2026, that election commissioners S S Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected to the alleged “centralisation” of ECINET, with access restricted for even authorised field officers – was earlier putting up these files through senior DEC Maneesh Garg, and before that through then DEC Sanjay Kumar.Though Garg had, while officiating as DEC (administration) during the leave period of DEC Bhanu Prakash Yeturu in July, issued a work allocation order that allowed Khanna to no longer route her files through then DEC Sanjay Kumar, this order was never implemented after the two election commissioners S S Sandhu and Vivek Joshi objected. This is recorded in the affidavit filed recently by EC in the Supreme Court.“The work redistribution orders issued by the officer concerned were never implemented after the orders of the two commissioners, and the oversight of the IT division by the DEC was never actually withdrawn,” EC said in the affidavit issued with approval of the full commission.Khanna, as a result, continued routing files through Sanjay Kumar, and after his stint with Election Commission ended, through Kumar’s link officer Maneesh Garg.Under the work reallocation order dated Nov 4, Pawan Kumar Sharma will be the new deputy election commissioner in-charge of the IT/ICT as well as grievance/PGRS divisions, and Khanna would put up files of these divisions through him.Sandhu and Joshi had written separate letters to cabinet secretary T V Somanathan in July end, complaining about the working of senior Garg. In the near-identical letters, they said that Garg, soon after assuming charge as link officer of then DEC (administration) Yeturu, who was on leave, had issued an order regarding work allocation among senior DECs, DGs and equivalent officers, without discussing the revised allocation with the commission or the two election commissioners.

This, Sandhu and Joshi said, was despite repeated oral instructions to all officers concerned against taking such actions without prior approval of the commission.The cabinet secretary had merely forwarded the election commissioners’ letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, apart from sending an acknowledgement to the two commissioners. As per the file noting furnished by the cabinet secretariat in reply to an RTI application by Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd), it was stated that any action against Garg “at this stage may be inappropriate” as the letters were not sent by the commission as a whole. “It may also be construed as interference in the functioning of the constitutional body,” it was stated.