Lok Sabha polls 2024: Election Commission removes Bengal DGP, home secretaries of six states

NEW DELHI: The Central Election Commission has ordered the Chief Secretaries to immediately transfer the Home Secretaries of six states and West Bengal DGP Rajeev Kumar to non-election-related duties.

The order came just days after the EC announced the date of the Lok Sabha elections. EC has proposed to transfer Home Secretaries in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

All the states have been directed to transfer officers who have completed three years of election-related work and officers who are currently monitoring election work in their home districts. The secretaries of the public administration department in Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh, the heads of local bodies including the BMC commissioner in Maharashtra and the additional and deputy municipal commissioners should be transferred conforming to the EC order.

Chief Election Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar, and Dr S.S. Sandhu held a meeting on Monday and evaluated the election preparations. Following the Election Commission's order, Rajeev Kumar was quickly replaced by Vivek Suhay, a 1988 batch IPS officer, as DGP in Bengal.

Interestingly, back in 2021, EC had suspended Sahay for the lapse in security department, after CM Mamata Banerjee suffered a leg injury in one strange accident just at the brink of assembly elections. But after the election, Vivek Sahay was again appointed as the director of the security department by the Bengal government.