Kolkata: In a seemingly unprecedented move, the Mamata Banerjee government Thursday posted controversial IPS officer and former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar as IT Secretary as part of a bureaucratic reshuffle in West Bengal.
The 1989-batch IPS officer is being probed by the CBI in connection with Saradha chit fund scam. While the central agency has investigated him for months, he has had public support from CM Banerjee all along. The Calcutta High Court granted him anticipatory bail in October.
Kumar was serving as additional director general, CID. He will now take up the post of Principal Secretary, Information Technology and Electronics — one of the most prestigious positions in the government, “reserved” for IAS cadre officers only.
The move came late Thursday, triggering a controversy in the bureaucratic circle in West Bengal.
A senior IAS officer in the state said the positions of some departmental secretaries — like chief secretary, home secretary, IT secretary, industry secretary and finance secretary among others — are “reserved” as IAS-cadre post. This is similar to how some senior positions are reserved as IPS-cadre posts, he added.
A second senior civil servant described Kumar’s transfer as “interesting and intriguing”. “Rajeev has been in the news for long. This may be a reason for shifting him to a non-police job,” said the officer, who did not wish to be named.
A third senior civil servant ThePrint spoke to said Kumar is an IIT graduate and is capable of handling such a post, but his transfer doesn’t have much to do with his qualifications.
“This posting has nothing much to do with his knowledge about IT department. It seems the government wants to deflect attention from the policing part. He is perhaps the first IPS officer to be assigned for this position,” said the third officer who too did not wish to be identified.
It is learnt that Kumar was on leave when the order was issued.
He has taken a leave for almost 45 days and will join office in January, a fourth official in the state government said.
Also read: Rajeev Kumar, a mighty Kolkata cop close to Mamata, is now just a pale shadow of himself
Legal battle
Rajeev Kumar was the most influential civil servant in the ruling top brass in West Bengal until the February when a CBI team raided his residence. CM Mamata Banerjee started a sit-in dharna in protest of the action, but Kumar’s situation took a turn for the worse.
Over all these months, Kumar was seen running between courts — the Supreme Court and the High Court — seeking an extension of legal protection from probable arrest, and filing a petition for quashing the notices served to him by the CBI.
However, things haven’t really moved on the part of CBI after Banerjee’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in September. Kumar was granted bail in October.
Reacting to the sudden transfer, a senior CBI official said the case is being dealt with in the court.
“It is a sub judice matter now. We are also fighting it out. But there is no way to think that the CBI is becoming or acting soft. Law will take its own course,” said the officer who asked not to be named.
Also read: Not just Rajeev Kumar, 3 more top IAS and IPS officers close to Mamata are being probed
Wow, Rajeev Kumar seems to have real goods on Mamta.
Democracy, peak democracy.