Sushil Chandra, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman, was on Thursday appointed as an Election Commissioner by President Ram Nath Kovind.
The post had fallen vacant after the appointment of then Election Commissioner Sunil Arora as Chief Election Commissioner on superannuation of his predecessor O.P. Rawat in December last. Former bureaucrat Ashok Lavasa is the first and most senior Election Commissioner.
Mr. Chandra, an IIT graduate, is a 1980 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) official. Having held several posts in the Income-Tax Department, he was appointed CBDT Chairman on November 1, 2016. Subsequently, he got two extensions and his tenure was to end on May 31.