The Cabinet Secretariat did not initiate action against an Election Commission officer despite complaints by two election commissioners, noting that doing so without a formal complaint from the poll panel as a whole could amount to “executive interference”, The Indian Express on Friday quoted a reply under the Right to Information Act as having shown.
The records were provided in response to an application by Right to Information activist and retired Navy officer Commodore Lokesh K Batra.
The records show that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi separately wrote to Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan on July 29, seeking action against Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg.
Garg, an Indian Administrative Service officer from the Himachal Pradesh cadre, was given additional charge of the poll panel’s administration division on July 28 while Deputy Election Commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu was on leave from July 27 to August 9.
Within hours of taking charge, Garg issued an order changing the work assigned to senior deputy election commissioners, deputy election commissioners, director generals and other officers, Sandhu and Joshi had alleged. The order revised the work allocation set out in a previous order dated September 2025.
In their letters, Sandhu and Joshi alleged that Garg had made the changes without consulting the Election Commission or the officers concerned, despite...