2010-batch IAS officer appointed Deputy Election Commissioner

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 Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on Saturday appointed 2010 batch IAS officer Prakash Rajpurohit as Deputy Election Commissioner in the Election Commission of India, filling 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.

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 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.

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