Incoming CEC Sunil Arora: The man who turned Indian Airlines around

One of his abiding regrets is the Centre's move to merge Indian Airlines with Air India, just when he had succeeded in making it profitable and capable of competing with low-cost carriers of the time

Sunil Arora, 62, will replace OP Rawat as India’s new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) on December 2. Arora, a 1980 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer will be in the saddle for two years, supervising the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and assembly polls in at least 10 states.

As India’s CEC at a politically crucial juncture, the current job is likely to be Arora’s most challenging assignment in his 38-year-long career as a bureaucrat, but the Rajasthan cadre officer has to his credit some rare successes.

Arora, who retired from the IAS in 2016, is known both, for his quiet decisiveness as