New Delhi:
Sushil Chandra has been appointed as the new Chief Election Commissioner of India. He will take charge Tuesday and serve for a little under a year before retiring on May 14, 2022.
Mr Chandra, who was appointed Election Commissioner in 2019, replaces Sunil Arora as India’s top poll official. During his term in office he will oversee the conduct of Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur.
During his tenure as an Election Commissioner, Mr Chandra supervised assembly elections of more than 10 states and worked towards making the entire nomination process online.
Before his appointment to the Election Commission, he was the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
The outgoing CEC, Sunil Arora, most notably oversaw the conduct of the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the Bihar Assembly election in October and November last year – which was the first major electoral exercise amid the coronavirus pandemic.
His final responsibilities included the conduct of state polls in Assam, Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, and, in what could be one of his final acts in charge, handed Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee a 48-hour campaigning ban for seeking votes on communal grounds.
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