Sunil Arora will be appointed as the next Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) by President Ram Nath Kovind. He is picked for the job despite his controversial past. In the notorious “Radia Tapes” — telephonic conversations between political lobbyist Niira Radia and several senior journalists, politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, taped by the Indian Income Tax Department in 2008-09 — Arora appears thrice.

In the tapes, Arora can be heard speaking to Radia about sending pointers for Tarun Das who was meeting the prime minister to discuss how Naresh Goyal and Vijay Mallya had connived with a minister to destroy Air India; discussing Ratan Tata being approached to become the chairman of a certain advisory committee in the airlines sector; and talking about corruption in the judiciary and how “judgements were fixed in the sealing cases in New Delhi when commercial areas and establishments in residential areas were sealed on the orders of erstwhile Supreme Court Chief Justice YK Sabharwal.”

Arora, a former Rajasthan-cadre IAS officer of 1980 batch is reported to take over on December 2, 2018, a day after current CEC, Om Prakash Rawat retires. He has previously served as the information and broadcasting secretary, the secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the joint secretary in the Ministry of Civil Aviation during 1999-2002 and the CMD for Indian Airlines. He was also appointed as an advisor to Prasar Bharti and then as director general and CEO of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs.

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