Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa

• Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, who was next in the line to head the poll panel, has been appointed as vice president for Private Sector Operations and Public-Private Partnerships at the Asian Development Bank.
• Lavasa would be only the second election commissioner to step down from the poll panel before completion of his term. The last time an election commissioner put in his papers was in 1973 when chief election commissioner Nagendra Singh was appointed a judge in the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
• Lavasa succeeds Diwakar Gupta whose term ends on August 31.
• Lavasa, would be in line to be appointed as the chief election commissioner when Sunil Arora completes his term if the government sticks to the tradition of appointing the senior-most commissioner to the top post. There is, however, no rule that requires the President to stick to this convention.