Election Commission of India.
Credit: DH Photo
New Delhi: Two days after it declared the schedule of the Lok Sabha (LS) polls, the Election Commission (EC) on Monday asked for the replacement of the incumbent home secretaries of six states, including three ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and one where it shares power with an ally.
The EC also asked for the replacement of the police chief of West Bengal, Rajeev Kumar, allegedly close to the state’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The move to replace him was criticised by Banerjee’s party, Trinamool Congress, which accused the BJP of trying to use the commission to its advantage.
The commission initiated the move to replace the bureaucrats holding key posts just two days after the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into effect following the declaration of the schedule of the parliamentary polls.
Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP government is headed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, are among the states where the EC moved to replace the incumbent home secretaries. Uttarakhand, another BJP-ruled state, and Bihar, where the BJP and its ally Janata Dal (United) share power, are also among the states where the commission has asked for changing bureaucrats heading the home department.
Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand, where the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leads the government, were the other states where the EC initiated a similar move.
The EC also asked for the removal of the incumbent secretaries of the General Administration Department in Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh. They all were holding additional charges in the offices of the chief ministers of the respective states.
The EC, according to the sources, was of the view that their continuation as the home secretaries could have disturbed the level-playing field during the elections. The office of the home secretary to the government of a state plays a key role in ensuring the maintenance of law and order, including the deployment of forces during the elections.
The commission has also dismissed Iqbal Singh Chahal, the commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, along with several additional commissioners and deputy commissioners. Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray called it the right decision but noted that it was too late. Thackeray said that the coalition government of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena and the BJP had taken no action against Chahal. He demanded that every scam in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation committed within the past two years must be investigated.
The Trinamool Congress, which – like the Shiv Sena (UBT) – is also a constituent of the anti-BJP I.N.D.I.A. alliance, however, was not amused by the EC’s letter to the state’s chief secretary B P Gopalika to remove Rajeev Kumar from the office of the Director General of Police of West Bengal immediately and reassign him to a post not related to the conduct of elections.
The EC stated that the next most senior officer at the police headquarters should take over the charge from Kumar and continue till the appointment of the new DGP.
Kumar had also been removed as Commissioner of Police in Kolkata ahead of the 2016 assembly elections in West Bengal.
The commission also asked the chief secretary of West Bengal to send to it a panel of three officers so that it could pick one for appointment as the next police chief of the state.
Banerjee, the TMC supremo and the state’s chief minister since 2011, had in February 2019 staged a demonstration after the Central Bureau of Investigation moved to arrest Kumar, an Indian Police Service officer of the 1989 batch, in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam. He was appointed as the police chief of the state in December 2023.
Kunal Ghosh, a spokesperson of the TMC, said that the EC’s decision to remove Kumar from the office of the DGP of the state ahead of the LS polls had reflected the BJP’s attempt to use the commission for its own interests.