CEC stays firm amid political storm over Bihar electoral roll revision

Ever since CEC Gyanesh Kumar-led poll body has taken up the revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, the 61-year-old ex-bureaucrat is in the line of fire of the Opposition parties

Mid-February this year, when the Centre announced that Gyanesh Kumar will be the country’s 26th Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), the Congress took to social media to describe him as Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s “right-hand man”. While Congress did not elaborate, its allegation left Kumar’s friends and colleagues bemused. They pointed out that Kumar, a 1988-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre, had a good working equation with both the Congress and Left leaders in Kerala. 

As an associate of Kumar told this newspaper, the Congress probably based its social media post on his stint as the Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), headed by Shah. At the MHA — between 2018 to 2021 — Kumar looked after the Jammu & Kashmir Division, helped draft the J&K Reorganisation Bill and contributed to the process of Parliament repealing provisions of the Constitution’s Article 370. 

In the same stint, Kumar worked for setting up the Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. 

For almost a month now, ever since the ECI notified conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electorate on June 24, the 61-year-old retired bureaucrat is in the eye of another political storm. INDIA bloc parties, including the Congress and its other allies, have accused him of doing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government’s bidding. The SIR has been termed as an exercise intended to disenfranchise the marginalised. It is an insinuation those associated with the election machinery, particularly in Bihar, refuse to accept. 

Kumar, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, speaks fluent Malayalam. During his stint in various capacities in Kerala, Kumar was one of the favourite bureaucrats of Congress’ chief ministers in the state such as K Karunakaran, AK Antony and Oommen Chandy, as also of CPI (M)’s EK Nayanar, VS Achuthanandan, and Communist Party of India (CPI) minister C Divakaran. During Kumar’s stint as the District Collector of Ernakulam, Antony told a public gathering that Kumar, though not from Kerala, was one of the most public-spirited bureaucrats in the state.  Later, when Antony was the country’s Defence Minister, Kumar worked as Joint Secretary in the Defence Ministry from 2007 to 12, tasked with modernising all defence shipyards and Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited (MIDHANI). 

Sources in the Nirvachan Sadan told Business Standard that Kumar was not perturbed over the allegations. Rather, he was confident that both he and his team at the Election Commission of India (ECI), will stand vindicated at the end of SIR exercise in Bihar and the fears of widespread disenfranchisement of marginalised communities will prove unfounded. 

As of Saturday, the ECI had covered 96 per cent of Bihar’s 78.96 million electors, and was confident that it would receive the remaining forms with six days remaining for the conclusion of SIR. 

What has peeved Kumar is the criticism of the SIR from some of his predecessors at ECI, sources said. To apprise the representatives of political parties and journalists, who visit him, of the ECI’s perspective, Kumar gives them copies of the Constitution of India and Representation of the People Act. 

Few have answers to Kumar’s legal defence of the SIR, to which the Supreme Court also agreed, but have questioned its intent. The ECI points to Article 326 of the Constitution, which mandates that the elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies should be held on the basis of adult suffrage--every person who is a citizen of India and not less than 18 years of age shall be entitled to be registered as a voter at any such election. Officials also ask why no SIR to weed out electoral rolls anomalies was conducted after 2003, including by some of his predecessors, who have now taken to criticising him. 

Sources in the ECI say they understand that apprehensions are not so much about Bihar’s electoral rolls, but especially for those of Assam and West Bengal, both border states that go to polls next year. In both the states, the question of illegal immigrants taking up Indian citizenship is politically volatile. 

Incidentally, Kumar’s tenure is up to January 2029, and the ECI under his leadership will conduct over 20 Assembly polls. When he retires three and a half years hence, Kumar would have become the longest-serving CEC in almost three decades. 

At a personal level, Kumar loves freewheeling chats, including on sports and cinema, where he can reel off iconic dialogues from Hindi movies, and is known to be a pleasant host. At the MHA, as the head of its J&K division, Kumar would serve kahwa, the way it is prepared in Kashmir. With Bihar Assembly polls round the corner, the favourite snack currently in Nirvachan Sadan is makhana. It could be Bengal’s sandesh or tapioca chips from Kerala in the months to come. 

Kumar hails from a middle class family. His father, Subodh Gupta, retired as the chief medical officer and settled in Agra. Over the years, the family hopped several cities across Uttar Pradesh, including Varanasi, where Kumar topped the UP Board Class 10. His swimming skills, which he tried out in the Ganga, are formidable. He has won several state-level swimming tournaments and nursed ambitions to cross the English Channel. In between, Kumar also topped the higher secondary exams while studying in Lucknow’s Colvin Taluqdars College. In the mid-1980s, Kumar wielded the badminton racquet with élan at Lucknow’s KD Singh Babu Stadium, where he sparred with national champion Syed Modi and Amita Kulkarni, who later married Syed Modi. 

An alumnus of the civil engineering department of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Kumar often shares an abiding anecdote with his friends. He was scheduled to catch the Gomti Express from Lucknow to Delhi, from where he was to fly to the US for a course at one of the top American universities. His bags were packed. As he waited for the rickshaw to take him to the railway station, his mother, quite uncharacteristically, served him tea with no sugar. When he asked why there was no sugar, Kumar’s mother reminded him that she hailed from a family of freedom fighters who served the motherland, not a foreign country. Overcoming the fear of facing his father's wrath, Kumar stayed back to the utter surprise of his teachers, relatives, 

and friends. 

“The journey was 36 hours, and to a country where I thought I would survive reasonably well given my comfort with English. Instead, I travelled 56 hours from Lucknow to Trivandrum, to a state I had never been to before and a language that I had to learn,” Kumar recently told a friend. 

In his career spanning decades, Kumar handled a range of assignments. But his latest one may be the most difficult of all.