Navin Chawla

Navin Chawla (born 30 July 1945) is a retired Indian civil servant and writer, who served as 16th Chief Election Commissioner of India.

Chawla was born on 30 July 1945 in New Delhi.

He studied at the Lawrence School, Sanawar, Himachal Pradesh from 1953 to 1961 (when he received his Senior School Certificate), and received a Government of India scholarship for his first two years at the Lawrence School.

Chawla received a B.A. (Hons.) in history from St. Stephen's College, Delhi in 1966 and a B.A. (Hons.) in history from London University in 1967.

He received a diploma in social administration from the London School of Economics in 1968.

Chawla is an Indian Administrative Service officer from the class of 1969.

He rose to the highest rank of Secretary to the Government of India.

He served as a magistrate and later commissioner of the Union Territory of Delhi.

He was appointed the first Chairman of the Delhi Vidyut (Electricity) Board.

Chawla was appointed a Fellow of Queen Elizabeth House at Oxford University in 1996.

According to his family, Chawla was deeply influenced by Mother Teresa and decided not to resign from the civil service in 1997 in accordance with her advice.

He was appointed Election Commissioner in 2005, succeeding B. B. Tandon (who was promoted to Chief Election Commissioner of India) and helped pioneer the open skies policy as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ( 1992–96 ).

Four phases (out of five) of the Indian general election to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament, were executed under his supervision in April and May 2009.

Chawla is best known for his biography of Mother Teresa and for conducting the 2009 general elections, despite concerns about his leanings towards the Congress Party.

Action was taken against alleged malpractice by Congress governments in Rajasthan, Assam and Andhra Pradesh and the Congress-Allied government in Tamil Nadu.

Chawla was appointed India's 16th Chief Election Commissioner on 21 April 2009.

He conducted the General Election of 2009.

He wrote Mother Teresa's best selling official biography, Mother Teresa.

He occupied a number of posts both in the Central Government as well as Union Territories of Delhi, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, becoming Additional Secretary and Secretary to the Government of India.

These appointments were made during the Prime Ministership under the NDA Government headed by Prime Minister Vajpayee of the BJP.

Chawla has undertaken reforms of the electoral process and the election commission.

He advocated a constitutional process for the removal of election commissioners, bringing it in line with that for removal of the chief election commissioner, so that election commissioners were afforded the same constitutional protection given to the CEC Chawla ensured that third gender individuals were given the right to vote for the first time.

They had been left out of the democratic process, since they could not register as male or female.

They could now register in a new category called "Other".

The issue was first broached by students at KIIT Law School, Bhubaneswar and Asia College of Journalism, Chennai.

This human rights initiative was emulated by many other organizations in India and elsewhere.

He also supported including the participation in the electoral process of under-trials in India.

He believed that under-trials should be allowed to vote, especially as convicts could participate in the electoral process and even stand for election.

He enlisted leprosy sufferers in electoral polls and encouraged braille liberate voters to vote independently.

Deeply influenced by Mother Teresa, he wrote her bestselling biography (translated in 14 languages).

Almost half a million copies have already been sold.

Substantial royalties have been donated to the cause of leprosy.

Because of her influence, he has set up two NGOs which provide free medicines to leprosy patients, and free vocational training to healthy children of leprosy parents, which also includes beauty training given free by noted beautician Shahnaz Husain, as well as computer training programmes.

Free education is provided to disabled children drawn from Below Poverty Line families.

Presently, 130 such kids and youth attend the Lepra India Trust School in Delhi.

Meanwhile, at the 'Darshan School', of which Chawla is Chairman, there are 52 Hearing Impaired children divided into seven classes of almost nine children per class as per the international norm.

20-30 boys and girls who are profoundly hearing impaired are taught Computer Software and helped with employment.

All services are free, including hearing aids (two per child) provided by Starkey Corporation.

Chawla is Founder Chairman of the Jaipur-based Lala Chaman Lal Education Trust, called 'Darshan'(Darshan Website), which looks after disabled hearing-impaired children.

which had obtained MPLADS funds from Congress MPs Aimaduddin Khan and R. P. Goenka.