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.
Read more: Who is Sushil Chandra? Know your new chief election commissioner
Born on May 15, 1957, Chandra completed his BTech from Roorkee University and also holds a bachelor degree in law (LLB) from DAV College, Dehradun. He has undergone various trainings at International Monetary Fund (IMF), IIM Bengaluru and Wharton on management. Before joining Indian Revenue Services (IRS), he was in the Indian Engineering Service.
{{/usCountry}}Born on May 15, 1957, Chandra completed his BTech from Roorkee University and also holds a bachelor degree in law (LLB) from DAV College, Dehradun. He has undergone various trainings at International Monetary Fund (IMF), IIM Bengaluru and Wharton on management. Before joining Indian Revenue Services (IRS), he was in the Indian Engineering Service.
{{/usCountry}}A 1980-batch Indian Revenue Service officer, Chandra spent 38 years of his career with the IRS. He has worked with several state governments, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Chandra has extensive experience in the field of taxation and was the chief of the Central Board of Direct taxes from November 2016-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.
As CBDT chairman, Chandra also played a role in tracking illegal money exchanged during assembly elections
“Under his stewardship the Department made extensive use of data mining and analytics for carrying out investigations into dubious transactions and tax evasion matters in a non-intrusive manner through ‘Operation Clean Money’,” states his profile on the EC website. “An avid proponent of the use of technology Shri Chandra has also taken the lead in rolling out the e-assessment process where scrutiny assessments are being made without any physical interface between the taxpayer and the tax department. With the increased use of technology and data mining, he was instrumental in increasing the number of taxpayers by 24% in. 2017-18.”