Cec commissioners to serve longest stint in two decades

Cec commissioners to serve longest stint in two decades

New Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is set to be the first CEC since 2004 to serve a near four year long term.

After M S Gill, the 11th CEC, who helmed the poll panel for four years and 69 days (12/12/1996-13/06/2001), no CEC has served even a three-year long term.

What makes team CEC unique this time is another factor- this will probably be one of the few Commission teams which will stay undisturbed for a good 3.5 years- right until mid 2028 when Election Commissioner Sukhbir Sandhu retires.

While CEC Kumar retires in January 2029, new Election Commissioner Vivek Joshi will stay in office right until 2030. This will allow a reasonably long term to the current team which will hold assembly elections across nearly 16 states by July 2028 itself.

Seldom has team EC stayed unchanged for such a long period. Data shows appointments of new election commissioners almost every year to alternate years at best.

Last few years offer a good insight.

If Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar were brought in as ECs in March 2024, Arun Goel was brought in 2022 while Anup Pandey and Rajiv Kumar came into the poll panel in 2021. Before that Sushil Chandra and Ashok Lavasa were inducted as ECs in 2019 and 2018 respectively.

The CEC terms over the last two decades, offer even greater insight into the frequent changes effected at the national poll panel.

The outgoing CEC Rajiv Kumar was at the top job for only 2 years, 279 days.

In fact, Following Gill's retirement in 2001, among the 15 CECs that have followed- only J M Lyngdoh, N Gopalswami, V S Sampath, Nasim Zaidi, Sunil Arora and Rajiv Kumar served at the top post for more than two years- but short of even a three-year term.

Incidentally, amid hearings on the appointments of CECs, the SC rued that hardly any CEC completed the expected six years term.

Under the 10-year UPA government, there were six CECs and in the current NDA government's eight years, there have been eight CECs, it was pointed out.

Factor this- the shortest term was served in 2015 by H S Brahma who served as CEC only from January to April followed by A K Joti who helmed the panel for 200 odd days only to be followed by O P Rawat who was CEC from lateJanuary to December 1, in 2018.