President Ram Nath Kovind accepts Ashok Lavasa's resignation as Election Commissioner

"The ADB has appointed Ashok Lavasa as Vice-President for Private Sector Operations and Public-Private Partnerships," the multilateral lending agency had said in a statement last month. "

He will succeed Diwakar Gupta, whose term will end on August 31.

Lavasa's term in the EC would have ended in October 2022 had he become the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).

He is the second election commissioner to step down from the poll panel before the completion of his term. In 1973, CEC Nagendra Singh resigned after he was appointed a judge in the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Lavasa's resignation comes at a time when the Election Commission is preparing to hold Bihar assembly polls amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Lavasa, a career bureaucrat, joined as Election Commissioner on January 23, 2018, and being senior most on the poll panel would have become CEC in April next year after the term of incumbent Sunil Arora ends.

Lavasa made headlines during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he gave a dissenting note to the Election Commission of India (ECI) giving a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former BJP president Amit Shah on allegations of violating the Model Code of Conduct.