The Election Commission of India on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, issued a new work allocation order that reaffirmed oversight over Director General (IT) Seema Khanna, bringing to a close a period of uncertainty inside the poll body that had lasted for more than three months.
The order placed the information technology and information and communication technology functions under Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma, and it made clear that Khanna would put up files relating to those functional divisions through Sharma.
The wording of the order was direct and deliberate, and it restored a reporting arrangement that had been the subject of internal disagreement, correspondence with the Cabinet Secretary, an internal note signed by two Election Commissioners, a press note, and an affidavit before the Supreme Court.
The significance of the new order lies not only in what it says about the present arrangement, but also in what it says about the order that preceded it. On 28 July, an earlier work allocation order had removed information technology and information and communication technology from the work allocation of the then Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar and had put those functions only against the name of Khanna.
The effect of that change, as it was understood at the time, was that Khanna would have reported directly to the Commission instead of reporting through a Deputy Election Commissioner. That was a departure from the established pattern in which the Director General (IT) reported through an officer at Deputy Election Commissioner level, and it became the centre of a dispute that unfolded over the following weeks and months.
The disagreement became visible when Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi wrote to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan on 29 July, the day after the July order was issued. In that letter, the two Election Commissioners said that Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg had issued the 28 July order without the approval of the Commission.
Joshi wrote that Garg had allocated work to himself and to officers senior and equivalent to him, and that when he asked for the relevant files they were not provided to him. The letter raised questions about process, about authority, and about the way in which work inside the Commission had been allocated, and it brought a matter that had begun as an internal administrative question into correspondence with the senior-most civil servant in the government.
The following day, on 30 July, an internal note signed by Sandhu and Joshi said that the previous work allocation dated 23 September 2025 would continue until consensus was reached. The note was, in effect, an attempt to hold the existing arrangement in place while the disagreement was resolved. The Election Commission later said that the 28 July order was never implemented.
In practice, that meant that Khanna continued putting up files through Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Garg, who had been in charge of information technology as link officer after Deputy Election Commissioner Kumar left the Election Commission in August. The formal order and the working arrangement therefore pointed in different directions for a period, with the July order on paper and the earlier arrangement continuing in practice.
The matter entered the public domain through an investigation by The Indian Express, published on 23 September, which revealed that the two Election Commissioners had written to the Cabinet Secretary.
Three days later, on 26 September, the Election Commission said in a press note that the letter was not about any policy matter of the Commission or the information technology division but about the working of an officer on deputation, and that oversight of the information technology division by the Deputy Election Commissioner was never actually withdrawn.
The press note sought to draw a distinction between a question about an individual officer and a question about the policy or functioning of the division itself, and it maintained that the oversight arrangement had remained in place throughout.
The position was then placed before the Supreme Court. On 26 October, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, the Election Commission said that the 28 July order was never implemented in view of the joint direction of 30 July. The affidavit gave the Commission's account a formal legal setting and linked the non-implementation of the July order directly to the note signed by Sandhu and Joshi.
It was the third public statement of the Commission's position in the space of a month, after the press note in September and the material revealed by the investigation, and it set the stage for the fresh work allocation order issued in November.
An Election Commission source, describing the new order, said that the work allocation order was as per the unanimous decision of the Commission, and that there was no change in the reporting structure of the Director General (IT). The source added that she had always been reporting to a Deputy Election Commissioner level officer.
That description presents the November order as a confirmation of continuity rather than as a change of direction, and it aligns with the Commission's earlier statements that oversight by a Deputy Election Commissioner was never actually withdrawn and that the July order was never implemented. The new order, on that reading, puts beyond doubt an arrangement that had been described in different ways at different stages of the dispute.
The question of who oversees the information technology division matters because of the work that the division handles. The division handles ECINet, a digital platform for citizen engagement in the electoral process, and ERONet, which helps Election Commission officials maintain the electoral system. Those are not peripheral systems.
They are central to the way in which citizens interact with the electoral process and to the way in which officials maintain the rolls and the wider electoral machinery. The reporting line for the officer in charge of those systems is therefore a question with practical consequences for the administration of elections, and not only a question of internal organisation.
The internal notings of the two Election Commissioners gave a further reason why the arrangement mattered to them. In those notings, they said that officers on the ground had told them they were not getting proper access to ERONet, leading to a centralisation of electoral rolls.
That concern linked the question of oversight to the experience of officials working in the field, and it suggested that access to the system, and the way in which the rolls were maintained, had become part of the discussion. The concern about centralisation gave the dispute a substantive dimension beyond the allocation of work on paper, because it touched on how the electoral system was experienced by those who used it at the local level.
The new work allocation order also covers other officers and other functions, and it sets out a wider distribution of responsibilities within the Commission. It covers the recently appointed Deputy Election Commissioner Prakash Rajpurohit, who has been given election planning, the Model Code of Conduct and delimitation, supporting Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Garg on election planning.
Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Garg retains election planning, electronic voting machines and the Election Database Management Division. Sharma, in addition to information technology and information and communication technology, also handles political parties, election expenditure policy, the observer division and coordination. Khanna, in addition to information technology, also handles the Public Grievance Redressal System.
Taken together, the order presents a settled distribution of work after a period in which the allocation of the information technology functions had been contested. The July order had sought to change the reporting line. The July correspondence had challenged the authority under which it was issued.
The July note had sought to preserve the earlier allocation until consensus was reached. The September press note had maintained that oversight had never been withdrawn. The October affidavit had stated that the July order was never implemented.
The November order now records the arrangement in terms that the Commission describes as unanimous, with the Director General (IT) putting up files through a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner, as she had done in practice throughout the period.
(Reporting based on The Indian Express and The New Indian Express.)