Gyanesh Kumar

Some Lesser Known Facts About Gyanesh Kumar

• His grandfather was a freedom fighter.

• Gyanesh Kumar’s father is a retired chief medical superintendent (CMS) from Etah district in Aligarh division in Uttar Pradesh.

• His mother is a teacher, who teaches yoga daily in the morning at Vijay Nagar Colony in Agra and conducts yoga camps at distant locations. She is also a preacher of the Bhagavad Gita.

• During his school days, Gyanesh Kumar was a topper at Queen’s College in Varanasi and Colvin Taluqdar’s College in Lucknow.

• After completing his formal education, he went to Delhi to prepare for the Civil Services examination and joined HUDCO for a year before clearing the IAS exams in 1988.

• He was first posted to Trivandrum as a District Magistrate.

  

• When the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power, Gyanesh Kumar worked as the joint secretary of defence production in the Ministry of Defence from 2007 to 2012.

• In 2014, as the resident commissioner of Kerala in Delhi, he led the successful evacuation of 183 Indians from Iraq during the violence caused by Islamic State (IS) terrorists. These Indians included 46 Malayali nurses who got stuck in Erbil.

  

• Gyanesh Kumar worked with Amit Shah during the modification of Jammu and Kashmir into a Union Territory in August 2019. He was then working as a joint secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs in Kashmir. He played a significant role in preparing the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill.

• In 2019, he was appointed as the additional secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs during the abrogation of Article 370.

• In January 2020, Gyanesh Kumar was deputed to Ayodhya in the Ministry of Home Affairs by Amit Shah. He led the establishment of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust to build the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

  

• He then looked after the matters related to the Ayodhya dispute and its proceedings in the Supreme Court.

• In April 2021, he was sent to the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs as its secretary.

• When Narendra Modi inaugurated the new parliament building, Kumar was sent to the Ministry of Cooperation, where he worked under Amit Shah.

  

• Gyanesh Kumar was on the committee to implement the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) (Amendment) Act in 2023.

• In the same year, he played an important role in the formation of three national cooperative bodies named Bharatiya Beej Sahakari Samiti Limited (BBSSL), National Cooperative Organics Limited (NCOL), and National Cooperative Export Limited (NCEL).

  

• During his tenure, Gyanesh Kumar also oversaw the timely launch of the CRCS-Sahara refund portal for the submission of claims by genuine depositors of four Multi-State Cooperative Societies of Sahara Group.

• In May 2022, he became secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation.

  

• His elder daughter Medha Roopam is a gold medal winner in shooting, and in 2024, she was working as the Chief Development Officer in Barabanki.

  

• Reportedly, Gyanesh Kumar is often termed as one of Amit Shah’s right-hand men.

• On 31 January 2024, he was superannuated as a secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation under Home Minister Amit Shah.

• In March 2024, he, along with Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, was appointed as the Election Commissioner of India.

  

• On 19 February 2025, the Government of India appointed him as the Chief Election Commissioner of India. He replaced Rajiv Kumar to take over the post.