New Delhi: In a major reshuffle in West Bengal ahead of the swearing-in of Mamata Banerjee as Chief Minister for the second consecutive term, altogether 30 IAS and IPS officers in the state were transferred on Wednesday. Of the transferred 30 officials, 14 belonged to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and rest from the Indian Police Service (IPS).
Some of these officials had been removed by the Election Commission (EC) during the recent Assembly election and now reinstated to their previous positions. Prior to today’s reshuffle, IPS officer Rajeev Kumar was reinstated as Kolkata Police Commissioner on May 21, two days after Banerjee returned to power with a huge mandate. He had been removed by the EC on April 12. Among the 14 IAS officials transferred today, Antara Acharya, who was District Magistrate of East Midnapore, has been made DM of North 24-Parganas district.
PB Salim was reinstated as DM South 24-Parganas district, while Rashmi Kamal has been asked to take over as DM, East Midnapore district. Smita Pandey, who had been working as District Election Officer, Kolkata South, during the Assembly election, has been sent to compulsory waiting. Four IPS officers Dhrubajyoti Dey, Rashid Munir Khan, Santosh Pandey and Sumanjit Ray have also been sent on compulsory waiting.
Surendra Gupta, working as Additional CEO, has been asked to take over as MD in WBIDC.
Dibyendu Sarkar, posted as additional CEO, will take over as Commissioner of Panchayat and Rural Development department. Among the IPS officials, the new SPs will be Kunal Aggarwal in Burdwan district, Prasun Bandyopadhyay in Malda district, Arnab Ghosh in South Dinajpur district, Mukesh in Birbhum district, Tanmoy Roy Chowdhury in North 24-Parganas district and Bharati Ghosh in West Midnapore district. Bhaskar Mukherjee, Bandana Varun Chandrasekhar and Gourav Sharma has been appointed as new Deputy Commissioners of Police under Kolkata Police.