S Y Quereshi is new Election Commissioner

NEW DELHI: S Y Quereshi, Secretary in the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, was on Thursday appointed Election Commissioner.

Quereshi fills the slot of the third Election Commissioner. The vacancy arose following the appointment of N Gopalaswamy as Chief Election Commissioner who succeeds B B Tandon. Navin Chawla is the other Election Commissioner.

N Gopalaswami will take over as CEC at 10 am at the Nirvachan Sadan, the headquarters of the Commission, here on Friday , the EC said in a press note.

The appointments of the CEC and of the EC have been made by the President on the recommendations of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), official sources said.

Meanwhile, Chief Election Commissioner B B Tandon demitted from the office on Thursday. But he is unfazed by the strong Left parties criticism of his handling of the Office of Profit issue.

"The Commission is transparent. We have not slowed down the process. We have not expedited it. It is taking a normal and judicial process," he said about the process to go into the disqualifications complaints several of them belonging to the Left parties, including Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.