Election Commission’s loss is ADB’s gain, says CEC, Sunil Arora on Ashok Lavasa

New Delhi: In his first remarks on the appointment of election commissioner Ashok Lavasa as Asian Development Bank vice-president, chief election commissioner Sunil Arora said the poll panel’s loss is ADB’s gain.

“EC’s loss is ADB’s gain,” CEC Arora told ET on Thursday.

Lavasa, a 1980 batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, was expected to succeed Arora as the next CEC from April 2021. Lavasa’s appointment at ADB also comes a year after he registered his dissent over EC’s decisions on model code violation complaints in Lok Sabha elections of 2019.


In response to ET’s queries on the issue, CEC Arora referred to his earlier press statement on it. “…it would kindly be recalled that a press release was issued from my office in this context on 18.05.2019…it remains as relevant now as it was on May 18, 2019”, CEC Arora said in a written response to ET. In his May 18 statement, CEC Arora had said that members of the poll body are not expected to be “clones of each other” and there have been many times in the past when there has been a vast diversion of views but the same largely remained within confines of the ECI.

His May 18 statement also made a reference to his May 5 interview to The Economic Times on the controversy where he had said that he would rely on the “eloquence of silence”.

The CEC, however, declined to comment on the issue of IT probes against Lavasa’s family members last year.