Praveen Gupta: ‘One man army’ in Election Dept behind successful Raj polls!

Jaipur: Chief Electoral Officer Praveen Gupta can be congratulated for peaceful, fair and successful elections in the State with a record voting of 75.45 percent.

He took command of this Department in July 2020 and for the last three years, he was busy preparing for the Assembly Elections.

The most important thing is that he did this great work single handedly. It can be said that he worked like a ‘one man army’.

A big team was provided to him by the Election Commission. From the Election Commission, he was provided with a large team of 9 officers including 2 Additional CEOs (IAS officers), 3 Joint CEOs and 4 Deputy CEOs (RAS officers) but Praveen Gupta completed the entire work successfully with the help of only two officers including a Joint CEO and a Deputy CEO.

Additional CEO Krishna Kunal (IAS) was posted in the department but he was also transferred in September, two months before the elections.

A new Additional CEO was not appointed in his place while the rest of the officers were also not deployed. Earlier, when Ashok Jain conducted elections as CEO in 2013 and Anand Kumar in 2018, they had the similar team of officers working with them.

However, this time, it did not happen. Why officers were not appointed to the vacant posts is a separate matter of discussion but the Election Commission left all the work and all the responsibility on Praveen Gupta alone.

By doing this the Election Commission had taken a big risk. Behind this risk, the Commission certainly had full faith in the ability, talent and hard work of Praveen Gupta.

The Election Commission was observing his work since the three years. Before the elections, when the Chief Election Commissioner and his team had come to Rajasthan to take stock of the election preparations, the Election Commission of India (ECI) was completely satisfied with the performance of Praveen Gupta. It is said that the Commission had decided to give a ‘free hand’ to Praveen Gupta and Praveen stood the test of this trust.

In fact, Principal Secretary rank 1995-batch IAS officer Praveen Gupta had shown his capabilities in the previous BJP government when he held the command of the Finance Department for five years.

That time, he played a record innings.
When the Congress government came to power, Praveen Gupta had planned to shift to New Delhi, but he could not go.

It was a blessing in disguise that he had to stay here and conduct the elections. He has once again proved his ability and talent as a CEO.

Now, the entire bureaucracy is making various speculations about the next responsibility to be handed over to Praveen Gupta in the new government.