Fact Check: Viral post claiming Ex-IAS officers were appointed as Election Commissioners of India is Fake

Social media users are sharing a document claiming that two new election commissioners were appointed to the ECI, following Arun Goel's recent resignation. On March 9, 2024, Election Commissioner Arun Goyal resigned just before the expected announcement of the schedule for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. According to the viral document, two former IAS officers Rajesh Kumar Gupta and Priyansh Sharma were appointed as Election Commissioners of India. The process of the above appointments was completed by the Prime Minister of India, Union Home Minister and Leader of the Opposition.

Fact Check:

After careful observation of the post we found the claim is False, The viral notice was actually a fabricated one.

We ran a relevant keyword search on Google “Two Election Commissioners to the Election Commission of India have been appointed” and did not find any information in the press releases corner on the official website of the ECI.

As per Google reverse image search, we found this false notice was shared by PIB fact check too on their social media platform on March 13, 2024, with a caption: “A notification regarding the appointment of two Election Commissioners to the Election Commission of India is circulating on social media #PIBFactCheck,”

No such gazette notification has been issued.

Also, we found Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury inform ANI that “Gyanesh Kumar from Kerala cadre and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu from Uttarakhand cadre were selected as election commissioners, Earlier, the meeting of the selection committee was scheduled to take place on March 15 at 6 pm but was later rescheduled for March 14, 2024. He said the meeting was held at noon after which the names of the two nominees were announced. The process to appoint an election commissioner starts with suggestion of names, based on the recommendation of a search committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary.

On March 15, 2024, the Election Commision of India shared a notice and according to the info in it, Shri Gyanesh Kumar & Shri Sukhbir Singh Sandhu assumed charge as Election Commissioners.

The ECI spokesperson also shared the same on their official social media handle.

On the viral fake notice, OpIndia has also published an article: "A notification regarding the appointment of two Election Commissioners to the Election Commission of India is circulating on social media. This notification is #fake.

Hence, we concluded that the notification on the appointment of new election commissioners is a fabricated one. The Government of India has not issued any such Gazette notification.

As per the latest notification, Shri Gyanesh Kumar & Shri Sukhbir Singh Sindhu assumed charge as the new Election Commissioners.