For the Lok Sabha election, the armed forces of the state police are being deployed in addition to those from other states. As per the directive of the Union home ministry, 15 companies of police from this state will be deployed in other states for election management.
It has been learned from sources that the formation of these forces has already been instructed. The allocation of companies from various places has also been finalized. Among the 15 companies being deployed from this state, two companies will be from the Kolkata Police. The remaining forces will be from places like Barrackpore, Durgapur, among others.
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Each unit will consist of 86 police personnel. The voting phase will commence from 19 April, with seven phases of polling till 1 June. The counting day will be 4 January. The election commission (ECI) has assured that no compromises will be made to ensure the election process is conducted meticulously and peacefully. Notably, the ECI is under extra scrutiny in Bengal this time. Sending central forces to Bengal has been done well before the announcement of the election schedule to restore voters’ confidence. So far, 150 companies of central forces have been stationed in various districts of Bengal.
The ruling Trinamul Congress in state has accused the ECI of acting at the behest of the BJP. This accusation came after the commission wrote a letter to the state’s chief secretary B P Gopalika on Monday, asking for the removal of Rajiv Kumar from the director general of police post immediately and reassigning him to a post not related to the election.
Additionally, the ECI stated that the next most senior officer at the police headquarters should take over the charge from Kumar and continue until the appointment of the new DGP. Sahay, who joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1988, was appointed as the police chief immediately after Kumar’s removal on Monday. However, the EC requested the appointment of IPS Sanjay Mukherjee on Tuesday as the new DGP, selecting him from a list of three officers sent by the state government itself.
Kumar had previously been removed as commissioner of city police ahead of the 2016 Assembly election in West Bengal. He was also removed by the EC from the office of the additional director general (crime investigation department) before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. TMC chief and state’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee had staged a protest in February 2019 after the CBI moved to arrest Kumar, an IPS officer of the 1989 batch, in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam.
