How India's election chief became embroiled in a crisis of trust

For most of his 36-year career in India's bureaucracy, Gyanesh Kumar built a reputation for getting difficult things done.

Now the 62-year-old, who runs elections in the world's most populous country, faces a rather different challenge: defending how his own institution makes decisions.

It is an unusual position for a bureaucrat who spent decades outside the public gaze, despite being entrusted with some of the Indian government's most politically sensitive assignments.

For about a year now, Kumar, India's Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), has been under intense political pressure over a sweeping revision of the country's electoral rolls known as the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR.

The exercise, which began in Bihar last year, has since been extended to cover most of India and more than 130 million names have been struck from draft voter lists across 30 states and federally-administered territories - roughly 13% of India's electorate.

The Election Commission says the exercise is intended to remove duplicate and ineligible entries while ensuring legitimate voters are included. Opposition parties and activists have alleged that it risks disenfranchising eligible voters. Kumar and the commission have rejected accusations that the process is being manipulated for political ends.

Then, this week, the controversy moved inside Kumar's own institution.

An investigation by The Indian Express reported that his two fellow Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders they said had been issued without their knowledge.

The report alleged that the disagreements went into the heart of the SIR - including how people are added to or removed from electoral rolls, changes to voter-registration procedures and access to the database containing hundreds of millions of voters.

The allegations are particularly sensitive for the three-member Election Commission, where disagreements are decided by a majority.

Kumar has not personally responded to the investigation. The BBC has contacted his office for comment.

In a statement issued after the investigation, the commission did not deny the reported disagreements but rejected suggestions of a serious internal rupture, saying differences of opinion were part of normal deliberations and that its decisions over the past year - including on SIR - were ultimately unanimous.

Over the weekend, Kumar, Sandhu and Joshi met and also issued a joint statement addressing some of the issues raised by the investigation. The commission also released a photograph of the three men together.

But the commission's response has not put the controversy to rest.

Opposition parties - as per several media reports - are preparing a motion in both houses of parliament seeking Kumar's removal. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led pressure group whose protests forced a minister out in July, has threatened nationwide protests.

Others have spoken in defence of the commission. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, whose party is part of the governing federal coalition, said the ECI's clarification reaffirmed the institution's "integrity" and criticised attempts to undermine confidence in India's democratic processes.

For much of his career Kumar's work happened away from the headlines.

Former colleagues have described him in past interviews as meticulous and deeply immersed in detail, someone who rarely lost his cool and knew how to deliver under pressure. And when the Indian government needed officials to carry out some of its most consequential decisions, Kumar was repeatedly there.

Born in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Kumar studied civil engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur before joining the Indian Administrative Service in 1988.

He was assigned to the southern state of Kerala, where his early career included a tenure as district collector of Ernakulam, which includes the port city of Kochi, formerly known as Cochin. One of his most visible projects was the redevelopment of Kochi's waterfront.

Years later, his assignments became considerably more sensitive.

In 2016, Kumar joined the Indian-administered Kashmir division of the federal home ministry. Three years later, he was involved in drafting the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, part of the process through which Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government revoked the region's special constitutional status and divided the former state into two federally-administered territories.

In 2019, India's Supreme Court cleared the way for a temple to the Hindu god Ram to be built on a site in Ayodhya that had been disputed by Hindus and Muslims for decades.

Kumar, who was an additional secretary in the Home Ministry then, headed the team responsible for implementing the court's ruling, including setting up the trust that would oversee the temple's construction.

The assignments were very different, but both demanded a particular bureaucratic skill of taking decisions of enormous political consequence and working out how the machinery of government would put them into effect.

People who worked with Kumar during those years say he excelled at precisely that.

"He never left things for others, got personally involved," one former colleague told The Indian Express, describing him as meticulous, hardworking and calm under pressure. "I have never seen him lose his cool." Another praised his "hard work and intelligence" and "administrative wisdom".

Kumar retired from the civil service in January 2024. Less than two months later, he was appointed an election commissioner - a day before the timetable for India's general election was announced. In February 2025, he became Chief Election Commissioner.

He was the first CEC appointed under a 2023 law that removed the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel and replaced the judge with a cabinet minister nominated by the prime minister. Opposition parties have argued that the change weakens the commission's independence.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, the third member of the panel, opposed Kumar's appointment and asked for it to be deferred while the Supreme Court considered challenges to the new law.

The law remains in force, but its validity is still before the Supreme Court. In September, a two-judge bench differed over the challenge and referred the matter to the Chief Justice to consider placing it before a larger bench.

Kumar quickly brought his hands-on administrative style to the job. One of his first instructions was to require staff at the commission's headquarters to strictly record their attendance biometrically, reportedly improving punctuality.

He also unveiled a series of reforms during his first 100 days, including plans to reduce the number of voters assigned to polling stations, redesign voter information slips and improve access to polling stations in densely populated cities, according to media reports.

In his first month, he oversaw the transfer of at least 10 chief electoral officers across states and federal territories - a number critics called unusually high for routine changes. He described his push to modernise and streamline the poll machinery as "EC 2.0".

But it is the SIR that has come to define his tenure.

As criticism of the exercise grew, Kumar became an increasingly public defender of it, at one point challenging Rahul Gandhi to substantiate his allegations of "vote theft" in a sworn affidavit or apologise.

The Express investigation suggested that questions were also being raised inside the commission. It alleged that Sandhu described one change as "unauthorised and illegal", while both commissioners raised concerns about the centralisation of the electoral-roll database and changes to its oversight.

The commission has disputed suggestions of a serious internal divide. After the three commissioners met on Saturday, it said decisions taken by the full commission over the past year had been unanimous. It also announced changes to how it would operate: meeting agendas would be circulated in advance, minutes would be issued and directions from commissioners to officials would be complied with.

Whether the controversy will have lasting consequences for Kumar or the Election Commission remains unclear. But it has brought new scrutiny to both the SIR and one of India's most important constitutional institutions.

Additional reporting by Rachita Prasad