india

Updated: Feb 14, 2019 23:56 IST

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.

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.