- Sunday, February 23, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Shubham Ghosh
ANUP Chandra Pandey, a former Uttar Pradesh-cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer was on Tuesday (8) appointed as an election commissioner in India. His appointment will restore the full strength of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to three ahead of some crucial state elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and others next year.
A vacancy rose in the ECI after Sunil Arora stepped down as the chief election commissioner in April. Sushil Chandra has succeeded him. Rajiv Kumar is the other member of the body.
Pandey, a 1984-batch officer, will demit office in February 2024 when he turns 65, as per the age criterion for election commissioners. Before retiring from the civil services in August 2019, Pandey had worked as the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh under incumbent Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and also as the state’s infrastructure and industrial development commissioner. He holds a BTech degree in mechanical engineering, an MBA and a doctorate in ancient history.
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Pandey’s controversial act
Pandey’s record as UP’s chief secretary has not been without controversies. In January 2019, he asked the state’s officials to show the Adityanath administration’s police shooting a number of alleged criminals as a major achievement. The BJP chief minister’s encounter policy has always been a subject of debate as it is alleged that policemen were targeting suspected criminals, many of them small and some even without any fault, to show that he is tough on crime.
Adityanath gave Pandey a six-month extension as the chief secretary even though he touched the retiring age of 60 in February 2019.
