EC appoints Rajesh Kumar as new Kolkata police commissioner; replaces Anuj Sharma

Kumar, who was earlier posted as the Additional Director-General of Pollution Control Board has been posted as the Kolkata Police Commissioner of Police.

Image: PTI

New Delhi:  Anuj Sharma was removed as the Kolkata Police Commissioner by the Election Commission on Friday and was replaced with Rajesh Kumar, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Kumar who was earlier posted as the Additional Director-General of Pollution Control Board has been posted as the Kolkata Police Commissioner of Police. Anuj Sharma was earlier the ADG of West Bengal Police. He was 1991 batch IPS officer. He was recently made the Kolkata police chief after replacing Rajeev Kumar, who was ensnared in a controversy in connection with Saradha chit fund scam. He was questioned by the CBI in the case. Apart from Sharma, Bidhannagar Police Commissioner Gyanwant Singh was also transferred by the Commission. The poll body named Natarajan Ramesh Babu, ADG and IGP, Operations, as the Bidhannagar police commissioner, an EC letter addressed to the West Bengal chief secretary said. It also named Avannu Ravindranath, DC (Airport Division) of Bidhannagar, as the new superintendent of police of Birbhum and appointed Srihari Pandey, DC KAP, 3rd Battalion as the superintendent of police of Diamond Harbour. The direction of the commission was to be implemented with immediate effect and a compliance report in respect to the joining of the transferred officers was needed to be sent within the next 24 hours. The EC, in its letter to the chief secretary, also directed that the present incumbent officers being shifted should not be involved by the state government in any election-related duty.