NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: A day after it substituted Bengal chief secretary and principal secretary (home) with its own choices, EC Monday replaced the DGP and Kolkata Police commissioner, among others. Hours after announcing the assembly poll schedule for Bengal along with those of three other states and a UT, the poll panel late Sunday night shunted out Bengal chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty, replacing her with 1993-batch IAS officer Dushyant Nariala. Principal secretary (home) Jagdish Prasad Meena was replaced with 1997-batch IAS officer Sanghamitra Ghosh. Chakravorty took over as chief secretary on Jan 1 and was the first woman appointed to the post in WB. She was also the state’s first woman home secretary. This is the first time WB’s top bureaucrat has been changed ahead of an election. On Monday, EC ordered another reshuffle, shunting out DGP Peeyush Pandey and replacing him with 1992- batch IPS officer Siddh Nath Gupta. Kolkata Police commissioner Supratim Sarkar was replaced by Ajay Kumar Nand, a 1996-batch IPS officer. EC’s overriding powers to shift officers directly engaged in the conduct of polls stem from Article 324 of the Constitution, which places the entire election machinery in a poll-going state or UT under its “superintendence, direction and control”. The 2021 assembly and 2024 LS polls in Bengal also saw transfers of the DGP and senior officials identified as “too close to the party in office”.
“CEC Gyanesh Kumar had at the EC presser Sunday assured that elections in Bengal would be violence-free and peaceful. In pursuance of this objective, EC appointed/ transferred senior police officials, including the DGP and Kolkata Police commissioner,” an EC official told TOI. Sources indicated more transfers at the district level in the days to come, to be done in consultation with Bengal special observer N K Mishra.Also making a change in the crucial post of ADG and IGP (law and order) — with a direct role in curbing political clashes and violence as well as ensuring judicious deployment of security forces for poll security — Election Commission replaced incumbent Vineet Goyal with 1995-batch IPS officer Ajay Mukund Ranade. Natarajan Ramesh Babu, a 1991-batch IPS officer, was ordered to be posted as DG correctional services. In its orders, EC made it clear that these officers have been barred from all work related to the Bengal elections. Changes in the police setup during an election season are not unprecedented. Before the 2019 LS polls, the commission had replaced Anuj Sharma with Rajesh Kumar as Kolkata Police commissioner. Since the 2016 assembly polls, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has brought back transferred officers to their previous posts after the elections were over.
