Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa had been appointed as a vice-president of the Asian Development Bank. The appointment to the ADB post, for which the nominee is hand-picked by the government of India, comes even as Lavasa had over two years of his tenure in the Election Commission remaining and was tipped to succeed incumbent Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora in April next year, going by the convention of seniormost election commissioner occupying the top post. With Lavasa set to leave EC prematurely, the election commissioner next in line, Sushil Chandra, is bound to take over as CEC next year. Lavasa will succeed Diwakar Gupta, whose term ends on August 31, as vice-president of private sector operations and public-private partnerships and shall be based at the ADB headquarters in Manila. He will have a tenure of three years. Lavasa, a former IAS officer, had occupied several key posts in the government of India, including as finance secretary and environment secretary, before being appointed as election commissioner. ADB said that Lavasa, as joint secretary in the department of economic affairs, had worked closely with many ADB projects that had private sector components.