Senior bureaucrat Gyanesh Kumar has been appointed as the new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), succeeding Rajiv Kumar. A 1988-batch Kerala Cadre IAS officer, Kumar has served as an Election Commissioner since March of the previous year.

He becomes the first CEC to be appointed under the revised law governing the selection of election commissioners. This new law has replaced the Chief Justice with the Home Minister in the panel responsible for selecting the head of the Election Commission.

Kumar's appointment was finalized and recommended to the President by the selection committee, which included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who convened earlier today.