Hyderabad (Telangana): Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra has been appointed as the next Chief Election Commissioner.
The Election Commission, comprising three members, has a tradition of appointing its senior-most commissioner as the chief election commissioner (CEC). The incumbent CEC's tenure will end on April 30.
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Sushil Chandra was born on May 15, 1957. He pursued his B. Tech from Roorkee University. He also holds an LLB degree from DAV College, Dehradun. He underwent several training courses at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Indian Institute Management (IIM), Bengaluru. He was an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer of the 1980 batch and served for 38 years. Before joining the IRS, he was in the Indian Engineering Service.
Chandra has rich and varied experience in various areas of taxation, having held sensitive posts in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi. He has worked in the areas of litigation, compliance management and International Taxation. His forte has been in the field of investigation where he spent considerable time as the Director of Investigation and Director General of Investigation, Mumbai and Gujarat, respectively followed by his stint as member (investigation), Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). He was posted as the chairman of the CBDT, the apex body looking after the work of policy administration and implementation of direct taxes in India, in November 2016.
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Chandra assumed charge as the Election Commissioner of India on February 15, 2019.
Spearheading the CBDT’s action against tax evasion in the wake of demonetization and signing various treaties with other countries for the automatic exchange of information are some of his notable achievements. With the increased use of technology and data mining, he was also instrumental in increasing the number of taxpayers by 24% in the financial year 2017-18.
