The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on Saturday appointed 2010-batch IAS officer Prakash Rajpurohit as Deputy Election Commissioner in the Election Commission of India. His appointment fills the vacancy caused by the premature repatriation of then-DEC in-charge of electoral roll and IT division Sanjay Kumar to his parent cadre in August.

Rajpurohit’s appointment was one among 27 Joint Secretary or Joint Secretary-equivalent appointments approved by the ACC, as per the order by the Department of Personnel and Training. The Rajasthan cadre officer has been serving as Joint Secretary in the Department of Defence Production under the Ministry of Defence since May this year. As per the order, he has been appointed till April 2030.

Why the post fell vacant

Sanjay Kumar had been DEC from August 2024 till August this year, when he was prematurely repatriated to his parent cadre and posted in the Delhi government. He had been responsible for the electoral roll and IT divisions of the ECI, and had signed the ECI’s June 24, 2025, order initiating the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the country.

As reported by The Indian Express last month, the functioning of the IT division of the ECI had been one of the issues raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in internal communications. One of the decisions they had raised objections to was the removal of Kumar as the DEC in-charge of IT in July.

Other appointments in the ACC order

According to the ACC order, Vivek Khare, a 1996-batch Indian Telecom Service officer, will be the Joint Secretary of the National Testing Agency (NTA), and Varnali Deka, a 2009-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, will be the Joint Secretary of the National Health Authority.

Rajpurohit, who had been working in the defence production department, now moves into one of the key administrative roles at the poll body at a time when the Commission’s voter-roll and technology operations have been under close public and political scrutiny.