Newly appointed election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu assumed charge on Friday.

The former bureaucrats were appointed as election commissioners on Thursday.

They are the first ones to have been appointed as members of the poll panel after the new law on appointment of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and ECs came into force recently.

Welcoming them, CEC Rajiv Kumar spoke about the significance of their joining at a historic point when the Election Commission is all set to conduct Lok Sabha elections, a spokesperson said.

The vacancies had come up in the Election Commission after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey on February 14 and the sudden resignation of Arun Goel on March 8.

Gyanesh Kumar and Sandhu, both 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, belonged to the Kerala and Uttarakhand cadres, respectively.