Sushil Chandra appointed next poll panel chief

NEW DELHI: President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday appointed former Central Board of Direct Taxes chairman Sushil Chandra as the chief election commissioner with effect from April 13, as incumbent CEC Sunil Arora demits office.

As the new CEC, Chandra will announce the results for the ongoing polls in West Bengal and completed polls in Assam,

Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on May 2. He will also conduct the Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh elections due next year.

Chandra joined the election commission on February 15, 2019 and was elevated to the post of seniormost election commissioner after Ashok Lavasa quit the Commission last year. As an election commissioner, he has helped conduct polls to at least 10 states and also overseen the Lok Sabha election of 2019.

Born on May 15, 1957, Chandra completed his BTech from Roorkee University and also holds a LLB from DAV, Dehradun. He has undergone various trainings at International Monetary Fund (IMF), IIM Bengaluru and Wharton on management. Before joining IRS, he was in Indian Engineering Service.

A 1980-batch IRS officer, Chandra spent 38 years with the IRS. He has worked with several state governments, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra,

Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. He has extensive experience in the field of taxation and was the chief of the Central Board of Direct taxes from November 2016 to May 2019. He was given two extensions as the CBDT chairman and spearheaded the Department’s action against tax evasion in the wake of demonetisation. He also helped the government crackdown on benami transactions by executing the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988.