7 Dec 2021
Neta·ResumeAppointed Election Commissioner by the President on 31 Aug 2017 (Ministry of Law & Justice announcement) and took over as CEC on 2 Dec 2018 on the retirement of O.P. Rawat, as the senior Election Commissioner. No selection committee existed then. Before the 2023 Act there was no statute on selection: the Union government, by convention, picked senior serving or retired Secretary-rank officers and the President appointed on its advice, with the senior-most EC normally elevated to CEC (as described by the Supreme Court in Anoop Baranwal, 2 Mar 2023).
source ↗Education: B.A. (Hons) and M.A. in English, Panjab University (Hoshiarpur) - per ECI profile
Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa first wrote to CEC Sunil Arora on 4 May 2019 about Model Code of Conduct decisions, and later said he would stay away from meetings on code complaints until minority views were recorded in the Commission's orders. His dissents concerned complaints against PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, which the majority cleared.
The letters themselves are not public; accounts come from PTI and Deccan Herald. The Commission's legal division reportedly held that dissent on MCC decisions stays on file and is not made public.