Gyanesh Kumar (born 27 January 1964) is the current chief election commissioner of India, and the first to be appointed under the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023. He has previously served as an election commissioner and as an IAS officer. He came under scrutiny during the 2025 Indian electoral controversy, where the Election Commission of India (ECI) was accused of collusion with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and of having engaged in electoral fraud in the 2024 Indian general election.

Early life and education

Gyanesh Kumar was born on 27 January 1964 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. He completed a BTech at IIT Kanpur. Following his graduating, Kumar pursued Business Finance at the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India, before studying Environmental Economics at Harvard University.

Career

Kumar is a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1988 Kerala batch. Kumar served as joint secretary in the department of defence production at the ministry of defence from 2007 to 2012. He served as secretary in the ministry of parliamentary affairs and the ministry of co-operation.

Kumar was involved in the drafting of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, which revoked the special autonomous status granted to Jammu and Kashmir in 1947. In January 2020, Kumar was assigned to the ministry of home affairs, wherein he was involved in the establishment of the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra, the organisation overseeing the construction and management of the Ram Mandir at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid.

Chief Election Commissioner of India

On 19 February 2025, Kumar was appointed as the new Chief Election Commissioner of India.

2025 Indian electoral controversy

In August 2025, Kumar became a focal point of the 2025 Indian electoral controversy, wherein Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Indian National Congress (often simply known as "the Congress"), alleged widespread electoral fraud in the 2024 Indian general election and the collusion of the ECI with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), leading to protests. Gandhi stated that votes had been "stolen" in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura Assembly constituency through five separate ways, those being 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos, and 33,692 voters misusing Form 6, which is used for the registration of new voters. Kumar was widely criticised by opposition parties and leaders, of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) coalition of failing to adequately respond to the allegations and of mimicking BJP rhetoric. In reaction, Kumar criticised the opposition of "spreading misinformation".

Kumar also refused to provide machine-readable voter lists and CCTV footage of polling, citing "voter privacy concerns", instead repeatedly demanding that the opposition submit signed affidavits. However, when asked about Anurag Thakur, a BJP Member of Parliament who had made similar allegations of electoral fraud against the Congress, but against whom the ECI had remained silent and who was not asked to submit any affidavits, Kumar did not respond.

During a parliamentary session on 18 August 2025, the INDIA bloc publicly acknowledged that it was considering a motion of impeachment against Kumar.