Delhi Confidential: Clarity On Seniority

The Union government appointed two former bureaucrats from the 1988 batch last week — Gyanesh Kumar and S S Sandhu — as election commissioners. Normally, the government fills one vacancy at a time, making it easier to define seniority and the line of succession to the position of Chief Election Commissioner. However, with the recent simultaneous appointments and both officers belonging to the same IAS batch, it was initially unclear who would succeed Rajiv Kumar as the CEC. It is now apparent that Gyanesh Kumar will be the next CEC after Kumar’s retirement in 2025.

Right Choice

BJP may be upbeat about its prospects for a hat-trick in the Lok Sabha elections, but in Haryana, where it recently replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as the CM, the party seems to be struggling to find the right candidates for all 10 Lok Sabha segments. In Rohtak, considered a stronghold of Congress’s Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his family, BJP candidate Arvind Kumar Sharma, who had switched from the Congress in 2019, is apparently keen on fighting election from Sonipat to overcome anti-incumbency. Sources said the BJP has been trying to rope in actor Randeep Hooda for the seat but has not succeeded yet. Now that Saini has become the CM, the party needs his replacement for Kurukshetra. Sources said the party’s attempts to convince a former Congress MP or his wife to contest from Kurukshetra are still on.