Chairman of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Sushil Chandra has been appointed as the new Election Commissioner on Thursday.

The appointment comes less than month before the poll panel announces the schedule of the Lok Sabha elections.

He will join the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora and Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa on the panel.

Chandra is the second Indian Revenue Service officer to serve on the poll panel after T S Krishnamurthy who was in charge of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections as the 13th Chief Election Commissioner.

Chandra is an IIT graduate and a 1980 batch Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officer.