The Election Commission of India issued a fresh order on October 4, bringing back oversight on IT head Seema Khanna. Files must now go through Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma. This change follows a row over an internal order from July 28 that gave her a free hand.
More than three months after the row over movement of IT Head Seema Khanna’s files, the Election Commission of India has issued a fresh order bringing back oversight over her department through a Deputy Election Commissioner.
An internal order issued on July 28 by Senior DEC Maneesh Garg had removed Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar from the charge of IT and ICT and gave Dr. Khanna a free hand, enabling her to directly report to the Commission. Following this, two Election Commissioners S S Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had written to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan on July 29 regarding the working allocation order of Dr. Garg, who had been in interim charge of Administration department.
As per the current order, dated October 4, Dr. Khanna is required to route the files related to IT/ICT and Grievances/PGRS through Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma.
Dr. Khanna joined the ECI in 2025 on deputation from the National Informatics Centre (NIC). She heads the commission’s IT department, and oversees its digital infrastructure, including systems for electoral-roll management.
ECI sources though insisted that there is no change in the reporting structure of DG IT as she has always been reporting to a DEC level officer. In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court the ECI had maintained that the July 28 order had never been implemented.
The sources also said that the work allocation orders were as per unanimous decisions of the Commission.
The letters to the Cabinet Secretary, by Dr. Sandhu and Dr. Joshi obtained through RTI by transparency activist Commodore (retired) Lokesh Batra explained their objections regarding Dr. Garg changing the work allocation of officers “within hours of” getting the charge of administration wing “without discussing or informing” them despite “repeated and explicit oral and written” instructions to all officers.
Both ECs had also said that Dr. Garg had “issued similar orders on one earlier occasion” while he was working as DEC (Administration).
Prakash Rajpurohit, an IAS officer of the 2010 batch, who was appointed as a Deputy Election Commissioner in the ECI filling the vacancy caused by the premature repatriation of Sanjay Kumar, who was earlier in-charge of the Electoral Rolls and IT division, would now be assisting Dr. Garg in Election Planning. Interestingly, he would also be in-charge of delimitation.
Earlier, Sanjay Kumar, who had been DEC from August 2024 till August this year, before his repatriation, had been responsible for the electoral roll and IT divisions of the ECI, and had signed the ECI’s June 24, 2025, order initiating the SIR in the country.