Amid the selection of Sukhbir Singh Sandhu from Pubjab and Gyanesh Kumar from Kerala as Election Commissioners on Thursday, fake gazette notification about appointment of two retired IAS officers to the poll body went viral on social media. The false claim made in the now-viral post has been refuted by the government.

The post shared on X with a caption in Hindi said, "New Delhi: Rajesh Kumar Gupta and Priyansh Sharma were appointed Election Commissioners of India. The process of the above appointments was completed by the Prime Minister of India, Home Minister and Leader of the Opposition." The post has so far generated over 17k views.

Similar posts were put out by other X handles as well.

However, no information was available in the public domain about the announcement and no such notification was available on the official Gazette website.

Moreover, Press Information Bureau (PIB) put out a clarification on their website with an X post, dismissing the claim.

“A notification regarding the appointment of two Election Commissioners to the Election Commission of India is circulating on social media. This notification is #fake. No such Gazette notification has been issued,” the statement read.

The selection committee, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, met on March 14 to select the two new commissioners for the poll body.

The vacancies were created after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey in February and the surprise resignation of Arun Goel last Saturday.