More checks added on EC staff in eye of storm amid row over internal dissent allegations

Banaskantha (TIP): The Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered a layer of supervision for a top official in charge of IT systems and shared key responsibilities of a senior deputy election commissioner with another officer, against the backdrop of a mounting controversy over allegations of internal dissent in the poll panel.
The November 4 work order comes three months after a controversial July 28 order prompted two election commissioners to write to the cabinet secretary objecting to the changes. To be sure, ECI has told the Supreme Court that the July 28 order was never implemented because of a July 30 order recalling the changes.
According to the new order, director general of IT Seema Khanna will be supervised by senior deputy election commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma. “She would put up files of above mentioned functional divisions through Sr DEC (PKS),” the order said, describing her responsibilities as IT/ICT and grievance/PGRS (public grievance redressal system).
Khanna is at the centre of a controversy over allegations that ECI centralised digital voter roll infrastructure and implemented restrictions in software to stop state officials from accessing voting lists.
Senior deputy election commissioner Maneesh Garg – who issued the controversial July 28 order – retains election planning but will be assisted by deputy election commissioner Prakash Rajpurohit, who also has charge of delimitation. “He will be supported by DEC (PR),” the order said.
As per the new order, besides IT and ICT, Pawan Kumar Sharma handles political parties, election expenditure policy, the observer division and coordination. He also oversees the North East-II, East-II and South-II zones. Khanna will put up files of her divisions through him. Garg retains election planning, EVMs and Election Database Management Division, along with East-I (Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh) and North-III (Uttar Pradesh). Deputy election commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu will look after administration, establishment, electoral rolls and RTI, and Rajpurohit will send election planning files through Garg.
“We can’t call this order a reversal of the July order because the previous order was never implemented,” a senior EC official told HT, adding that the new order was a unanimous decision by the poll panel.
The order assumed significance because it comes roughly three months after election commissioners SS Sandhu and Vivek Joshi wrote nearly identical letters to cabinet secretary TV Somanathan in an unprecedented step on July 29. Sandhu’s letter was accompanied by the copy of an order issued by Garg on July 28 allocating work to himself and other EC officials, including Seema Khanna and deputy election commissioner Sanjay Kumar.
According to a Hindustan Times report dated October 3, the commissioners were concerned about Garg’s decision to change the routing of files of the IT department under Khanna. The files had earlier gone to Sanjay Kumar.
In their confidential letters to the cabinet secretary, the commissioners said Garg was given additional charge of the Administration Division on July 28, while DEC Bhanu Prakash Yeturu was on leave until August 9. Within hours, they said, he issued a work-allocation order covering officers senior and equivalent to him. The letters said the commissioners were not consulted on the decision. Both cited Sections 18(1) and 18(2) of the 2023 CEC/EC Act. Joshi added that a file he asked for from the Administration Division was not provided.
In the Supreme Court, an ECI affidavit said last month that the July 28 order was never implemented after another direction on July 30. The affidavit argued that the correspondence could not be treated as evidence that key special intensive revision decisions were taken without the concurrence of the other commissioners. The work order and the letters are significant because Khanna and the IT department are at the heart of a controversy after an investigation by the Indian Express said that the new IT protocol/system put in place by Khanna and approved by ECI shut the database of electors (the rolls) from the very people responsible for adding or deleting names, Electoral Registration Officials (EROs).