Why does electrum need connection to server when recovering a wallet from a seed? Why does electrum client need connection to server when recovering a wallet from a seed? Isn't the generation of private keys done locally?
While the generation of the private keys can be locally, to recalculate the account's balance tied to the private keys needs data from the distributed ledger (blockchain). As the electrum client does not keep a replica of the ledger it will need access to recalculate the balance of the accounts and hence of the wallet as a whole.