{"id":62552,"date":"2025-02-14T10:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/?p=62552"},"modified":"2025-02-14T10:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T10:04:08","slug":"rajiv-kumars-term-ends-new-election-body-chief-to-be-named-soon-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/?p=62552","title":{"rendered":"Rajiv Kumar’s Term Ends, New Election Body Chief To Be Named Soon: Sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

The selection of a new Chief Election Commissioner<\/a> – who will oversee the conduct of polls in Bihar later this year and, most probably in Bengal and Tamil Nadu in 2026, and Assam and Kerala too – will begin soon, sources told NDTV. The committee is expected to meet Monday.<\/p>\n

It will consist of Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/a>, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in his capacity as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.<\/p>\n

The process will start a day before the Supreme Court hears petitions against the new law governing selection of a CEC and ECs. Critics say the law gives the centre an edge in the processes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

READ |\u00a0<\/strong>Top Court To Hear Petitions On Poll Body Appointments On Feb 19<\/a><\/p>\n

The current Chief Election Commissioner is Rajiv Kumar, who will demit office on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Rajiv Kumar As CEC<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Mr Kumar was appointed as the CEC in May 2022.<\/p>\n

Since then he has overseen multiple high-profile electoral exercises, including the Lok Sabha election in April-June last year and Jammu and Kashmir’s first Assembly poll in over a decade.<\/p>\n

READ |\u00a0<\/strong>Omar Abdullah Back As J&K Chief Minister After 10 Years<\/a><\/p>\n

He conducted the presidential elections in 2022 and in 2023 oversaw the Karnataka and Telangana polls, which the Congress won, and the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan polls, which the BJP won.<\/p>\n

He concluded his tenure as the poll panel chief with last week’s Delhi election.<\/p>\n

Retirement Plans?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In January, while announcing the Delhi poll dates, Mr Kumar had quipped he plans to “detoxify” himself by spending several months in solitary confinement in the Himalayas after he retires.<\/p>\n

READ |\u00a0<\/strong>“Will Go To Himalayas”: Poll Body Chief On Post-Retirement Plans<\/a><\/p>\n

“I will detoxify myself for the next four-five months… go to the Himalayas, be away from the glare of (the media). I need some solitude…” he said. Mr Kumar, a 1984-batch IAS officer from the Bihar\/Jharkhand cadre, also spoke about wanting to give back to teach underprivileged children.<\/p>\n

Claims During Tenure<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Mr Kumar’s tenure as the Chief Election Commissioner was marked by multiple complaints, particularly from the Congress and, in the run-up to the Delhi election, the Aam Aadmi Party.<\/p>\n

The opposition had routinely alleged the EC favours the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and also questioned the use of EVMs, or electronic voting machines, claiming it can be hacked.<\/p>\n

READ |\u00a0<\/strong>“No Drawback In EVMs, Not Going Back To Paper Ballots”: Poll Commissioner<\/a><\/p>\n

The EC also came under fire over the release of data on voting day; during the Haryana election last year, for example, the Congress was very critical of delays in publishing live voting trends.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal had hit out last month, days before voting for the Delhi election, declaring the poll panel had “surrendered before the BJP”.<\/p>\n

Mr Kejriwal – whose party was thumped, and who lost his seat in the Assembly – hinted darkly at a quid-pro-quo between Mr Kumar and the central government, a charge the CEC flatly denied.<\/p>\n

READ |\u00a0<\/strong>“Tactics To Malign”: Poll Body Hits Back At AAP Day Before Delhi Votes<\/a><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Mr Kumar asserted that that the system of poll data is robust with in-built “red flags” which ensure that “nothing can go wrong”. He declared himself “very confident” that nothing could go wrong; “… even if someone makes an error, the system won’t accept it”.<\/p>\n

On EVMs, he dismissed talk of manipulation or voter fraud, pointing out the machines had passed several tests of judicial scrutiny, including by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

“EVMs are not hackable. Every claim of manipulation has been thoroughly investigated and debunked. This technology has consistently upheld the principles of free and fair elections,” he said.<\/p>\n

NDTV is now available on WhatsApp channels. Click on the link<\/a> to get all the latest updates from NDTV on your chat. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u200bThe selection of a new Chief Election Commissioner – who will oversee the conduct of elections in Bihar and, probably next year’s Bengal and Tamil Nadu polls also, as well as in Assam and Kerala – will begin in a few days, sources told NDTV Friday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The selection of a new Chief Election Commissioner – who will oversee the conduct of polls in Bihar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":62553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z.jpeg",1200,738,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z-300x185.jpeg",300,185,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z-768x472.jpeg",640,393,true],"large":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z-1024x630.jpeg",640,394,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z.jpeg",1200,738,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z.jpeg",1200,738,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z-825x575.jpeg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chs1ahkg_rajiv-kumar-_625x300_07_January_25-ULMa5Z-590x410.jpeg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/?author=0"},"category_info":"Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alertindianews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}