New Delhi: Former Kerala chief secretary Jiji Thomson has alleged that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had attempted to persuade him to contest as a Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.Gyanesh Kumar is currently being severely criticised over how he is conducting the special intensive revision of the voter rolls, including allegedly by his own colleagues in the poll body.Former Kerala chief secretary, Jiji Thomson, told Onmanorama that it was during a flight to Delhi that Kumar asked him about the possibility of contesting as a BJP candidate in Kerala.“I was serving as the Kerala Chief Secretary then. We were together on a flight. He was waxing eloquent about Prime Minister Modi and openly asked me if I was interested in contesting as a BJP candidate from Pathanamthitta in the 2019 general elections. He was very persuasive, I declined it promptly,” said Thomson, according to the report.At the time, Thomson was serving as chief secretary. He retired in 2016.Thomson, according to the Onmanorama report, was asked by Kumar, a 1988-batch Kerala-cadre IAS officer, to contest elections more than once.The report says that Thomson recalled another instance earlier in his official career when he was approached by a few people to contest elections. “Although I had declined the offer at that time also, Gyanesh came to know about it and tried to persuade me to enter politics,” he was quoted as having said. The Wire has reached out to Gyanesh Kumar for his response.Gyanesh Kumar took charge as the 26th CEC in February 2025. The Election Commission is a non-partisan constitutional body.Questions over Kumar’s allegiance to political parties have been swirling through the conduct of the SIR and the communities this exercise seems to have affected the most. The reports of two Election Commissioners formally objecting to his decisions 14 times in the last 10 months have strengthened these concerns.Former Kerala CEO also weighs inFormer Kerala Chief Electoral Officer Teeka Ram Meena has alleged, according to a report on Ommcom News, that Gyanesh Kumar acted arbitrarily while introducing changes related to Form 6, allegedly ignoring the views of the other two members of the Election Commission, according to the Indian Express revelations.Among Meena’s batchmates are both CEC Kumar and Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu.“The Election Commission is taking independent decisions. With three members, the majority view has to be taken. But Gyanesh acted arbitrarily,” Meena said.He also said that the changes made to Form 6 were contrary to the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the election rules of 1961.