Former Indian Administrative Services officer Anup Chandra Pandey was appointed an election commissioner on Tuesday, reported PTI. Pandey is an Uttar Pradesh cadre of the 1984 batch.

He was earlier the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh under Chief Minister Adityanath before retiring from the civil services in 2019. Pandey has also served as the infrastructure and industrial development commissioner in the state.

The first Assembly elections after Pandey’s appointment will be in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and Uttarakhand.

Pandey was appointed to the post after a seat fell vacant in the poll panel as former Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora demitted office on April 12. While Sushil Chandra became the new chief election commissioner, Rajiv Kumar is the other election commissioner.

Born in Chandigarh on February 15, 1959, he has a Bachelor of Technology degree in mechanical engineering, a Master of Business Administration degree and a doctorate in ancient history.

The former IAS officer had also managed Adityanath’s crop loan waiver initiatives. On his LinkedIn profile, the new election commissioner notes that he was “instrumental” in planning, organising and coordinating the Kumbh Mela in 2019. “The peaceful, transparent & incident-free conduct of Lok Sabha elections 2019, where tensions between various stakeholders were very high was certainly a very big achievement,” his profile adds.