on May 29, 2021)The Centre shifted West Bengal chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay on Friday to New Delhi and asked him to report at the North Block by 10 am on Monday. The order, which seniors in the Bengal government said was “unexpected, unprecedented and reeking of vendetta politics”, came four days after the Centre had approved a three-month extension for the 1987-batch officer.A letter signed by an under-secretary in the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions reached Nabanna on Friday evening asking the state government to “relieve Bandyopadhyay with immediate effect”.The chief secretary was scheduled to retire on May 31 but CM Mamata Banerjee had written to PM Narendra Modi on May 10 – five days after taking oath as CM for a third term – requesting that Bandyopadhyay be allowed to continue for three more months because of the ongoing pandemic. The Centre intimated its approval of this request on May 24, four days before the new order shifting out Bandhopadhyay reached Nabanna.
Bandyopadhyay, on a tour of Bengal’s Cyclone-Yaas-ravaged coastal zone with the CM, did not react. “It is not clear how this type of ‘central deputation order’ applies to IAS officers who have not applied for any central deputation,” an officer said.CM Banerjee, too, did not react immediately but people close to her said she was “clearly unhappy”. TMC MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray asked “how low the Modi-Shah’s BJP could stoop”. “Has this ever happened since Independence? Forced central deputation of a state CS… All because the people of Bengal chose Mamata Banerjee with an overwhelming mandate,” he added. BJP state general secretary Sayantan Basu, however, saw no politics in what he said was an “administrative decision”.Central government rules say an officer can be deputed to the Centre or any other state and, if there is any “disagreement”, states must obey the Centre’s decision. The Centre had last year invoked a similar clause to transfer three IPS officers but the Bengal government had refused to release them. All the officers still serve in the state.
Source: Economic Times
