Sushil Chandra named as Election Commissioner, team for 2019 polls ready

Weeks ahead of the 2019 general election, Sushil Chandra, a 1980-batch Indian revenue service (IRS) official has been appointed as the election commissioner. An IIT alumnus, Chandra, prior to his new assignment, was the chief of the central bureau of direct taxes CBDT, the apex policy making body of the Income Tax department.

Updated on: Feb 14, 2019, 23:56:17 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Smriti Kak Ramachandran

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Weeks ahead of the 2019 general election, Sushil Chandra, a 1980-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) official has been appointed as the election commissioner. An IIT alumnus, Chandra, prior to his new assignment, was the chief of the central bureau of direct taxes CBDT, the apex policy making body of the Income Tax department.

Sushil Chandra is a 1980-batch Indian Revenue Service officer. (ANI)

Chandra will join the poll panel as the second election commissioner; currently former bureaucrat Sunil Arora is the chief election commissioner and Ashok Lavasa, also a former bureaucrat, is the election commissioner.

Chandra was appointed as the CBDT chief on November 1, 2016 and was given a one-year extension till May 31, this year. The poll panel has the mandate of holding elections for the Lok Sabha and the state assembly polls.

The commission is expected to announce the schedule for the general elections and a clutch of assembly elections over the course of the next few weeks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Smriti Kak Ramachandran
Smriti covers an intersection of politics and governance. Having spent over a decade in journalism, she combines old fashioned leg work with modern story telling tools.

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