Kolkata, April 4 -- The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday appointed Rahul De as the Deputy Commissioner of South West (Behala) division of Kolkata Police.
De, an IPS officer of the 2015 batch replaced Saumya Roy who was removed by the poll panel on Tuesday.
The Commission had directed the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Bengal, to transfer Roy to a non-election-related post with immediate effect.
Accordingly, the CEO sent the names of three eligible officers to replace Roy on Wednesday. Roy is the husband of Arundhati Moitra popularly known as Lovely Maitra, an elected Trinamool Congress MLA of Sonarpur Dakshin.
This is not the first time that the poll panel has moved Roy to a non-election-related post.
Before the Assembly elections in Bengal in 2021, the ECI had also shifted Roy when they came across reports of him being the husband of Lovely Moitra who was contesting the Assembly polls on TMC's ticket.
Roy was then posted as the Superintendent of Police of Howrah (Rural) and was given a non-election-related post.
His transfer was based on the general principle that "close relatives of active public representatives may not be assigned such duties during elections which may create any perception of biases/ partiality."
The ECI soon after the announcement of Lok Sabha elections removed Rajeev Kumar, Director General of Police (DGP), Bengal, and appointed Sanjay Mukherjee in his place.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.