Election Commission Reverses Work Allocation Order, Brings Back Oversight Over Director General (IT)

Three months after a work allocation order led two election commissioners to express concern and raise the matter with Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday issued a fresh order, which, among other changes, brought back the layer of oversight over its Director General (IT), Seema Khanna, that had been removed on July 28. Under the new order, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner (DEC) Pawan Kumar Sharma has been assigned charge of IT/ICT, with Khanna required to route files through him. “She would put up files of above-mentioned functional divisions through Sr. DEC(PKS),” the order said. The move effectively reverses a July 28 work allocation order that had removed IT and ICT from the charge of then DEC Sanjay Kumar and placed them under Khanna, indicating she would have reported directly to the Commission, instead of a DEC. The July 28 order led to Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi writing to Somanathan on July 29, saying that Senior DEC Maneesh Garg had issued the same without the Commission’s approval. While the work allocation order had not been amended till now, the EC has said that it was never implemented following the concerns raised by the two election commissioners. In effect, Khanna had continued putting up files through Garg, who had been charge of IT as the link officer after Kumar left the EC in August. “The work allocation order is as per unanimous decision of the Commission. There is no change in the reporting structure of DG IT. She has always been reporting to a DEC level officer,” an EC source said Thursday. After The Indian Express investigation on September 23 revealed that the two election commissioners had written to the Cabinet secretary and petitions were filed in the Supreme Court on the functioning of the Commission, the EC told the court on October 26 that the July 28 work allocation order was issued by an additional secretary-rank officer, Garg. “In view of the joint direction dated 30 July 2026 by the two Election Commissioners, the order of 28 July 2026 was never implemented,” the EC counter-affidavit said.