Records released under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, reveal that on July 29, 2026, two Election Commissioners of India (ECI), Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, sent different letters to the Cabinet Secretary, T.V. Somanathan, raising objections to the comments of a senior official and a work-allocation order.
The letters were addressed to additional charge of the Administration Division Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg, who had been given the additional charge while Deputy Election Commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu was on leave from July 28.
So soon after assuming the post of the link officer last week that within hours Garg sent an order to reorganise the distribution of duties among senior deputy election commissioners, deputy election commissioners, director generals and officials of comparable rank.
The two commissioner reportedly complained that the changes had been made without reference to the Commission or the Commissioners’ officers. They also voiced worried issues of the orders’ issuance.
Cabinet Secretariat’s Response
The records of RTI are available to note that the letters were registered on July 30 and sent to officials of the Department of Personnel and Training and CPC’s office by August 5.
The Cabinet Secretariat pointed out that the issue was related to complaints made by the commissioners in their own right. It also saw that taking action without a precise communication from Commission as a whole can be regarded as interference in the functioning of a constitutional body.
The Election Commission then explained that it was not a matter of policy, but rather of one of the officers’ working arrangements. It stated that the decisions to change work allocations, which came from two commissioners, were not followed up.
The development is coming as part of broader reports of friction within the poll body, related to electoral-roll procedures. The present letters, however, concern only procedural matters of assigning tasks to administration, and are different from those objections.