NEW DELHI:
Controversial IPS officer Rajeev Kumar missed his 10 a.m reporting time for new duty in the Home Ministry on Thursday as ordered by the Election Commission (EC) which relieved him from his post of ADG CID in West Bengal following violence in Kolkata.
Home Ministry sources said Kumar neither joined nor gave any information. Kumar, the former Kolkata Police Commissioner, has earlier been questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had in February staged a 70-hour dharna after the CBI made a bid to question Kumar at his residence in Kolkata, which was thwarted by the local police. The CBI later had to approach the Supreme Court to make the questioning possible.
The EC on Wednesday relieved Kumar from his post of ADG CID, with orders to report for duty in the Home Ministry on Thursday. The Commission had also removed with immediate effect the West Bengal’s Principal Secretary (Home) Atri Bhattacharya for “having interfered” in the poll process and curtailed the poll campaign in the state by a day as it ordered stoppage of electioneering from 10 p.m. on Thursday on the remaining nine Lok Sabha constituencies going to the polls on May 19.
The EC took the decision invoking for the first time Article 324 of the Constitution which gives it special powers to control and give directions for holding elections. The decisions the EC took “as an action on violence in West Bengal on Tuesday during a road show conducted by BJP President Amit Shah.
The violence had also led vandalisation of Bengali polymath Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s statue.
