NEW DELHI: Three months after two Election Commissioners objected to a unilateral change in work allocation that removed intermediate oversight of the poll body’s IT division, the Election Commission of India has issued a fresh order reaffirming that Director General (IT) Seema Khanna will report through a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner.
In the office order issued on Wednesday, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma has been given charge of “IT/ICT”. The order specifically states that Khanna “would put up files of above-mentioned functional divisions through Sr. DEC (PKS).”
The July 28 order had taken the subjects of IT and ICT away from then-Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar and listed them only against Khanna’s name, effectively placing her under the direct control of the Commission. That order, issued by Senior DEC Maneesh Garg, prompted Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to write separately to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan the very next day. They stated that the order had been issued without the Commission’s approval.
The IT division manages ECINet, the digital platform for citizen engagement in the electoral process, and ERONet, used by election officials to maintain electoral rolls. In internal notings, the two Commissioners recorded that officers on the ground had reported inadequate access to ERONet, raising concerns of “centralisation of electoral rolls.”
An internal note signed by Sandhu and Joshi on July 30 and circulated within the Commission directed that the previous work allocation of September 23, 2025, would continue “till the time a consensus is reached.” The Election Commission has maintained that the July 28 order was never implemented. In a September 26 press note issued after The Indian Express reported the letters to the Cabinet Secretary, the Commission said the oversight of the IT division by a DEC-level officer “was never actually withdrawn.” In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on October 26, the Commission reiterated that the July 28 order “was never implemented” in view of the joint direction by the two Commissioners.
Joshi’s letter to the Cabinet Secretary had also noted that relevant files were not provided when sought and that Garg had allocated work to himself as well as to officers senior and equivalent to him.
The latest order also assigns responsibilities to the newly appointed Deputy Election Commissioner Prakash Rajpurohit. He has been given election planning, the Model Code of Conduct and delimitation, among other subjects. On election planning, he will support Senior DEC Garg.
An EC source said on Thursday that the work allocation order reflects a unanimous decision of the Commission and that there has been “no change in the reporting structure of DG IT,” who “has always been reporting to a DEC level officer.”