By IANS
Lucknow : In yet another reshuffle of officers from the Indian Police Service (IPS), Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Wednesday ordered transfer of 16 senior superintendents of police (SSP).
These included the district police chiefs of Agra, Kanpur, Jhansi, Faizabad, Muzaffarnagar, Etah, Rae Bareli and Deoria.
Prominent among those shifted was Neera Rawat, SSP of Agra, who now goes to Faizabad in the same capacity. The others included SSP Jhansi S.K. Bhagat who now moves to Kanpur, replacing Anand Swarup who goes to the vigilance headquarters.
Jasvir Singh, who was sent as district chief of crime-prone Muzaffarnagar district barely a month ago, has been shifted to the far less important railway police in Lucknow.
More than half of Uttar Pradesh’s 430-odd IPS officers have been reshuffled ever since Mayawati assumed power in the state about 10 months ago.
In a number of cases, the same officer was shifted up to half a dozen times during this period.
Political circles were agog with rumours that the transfers being undertaken now were a part of the chief minister’s pre-election exercise.
Reacting to the recent spate of transfers, former minister and Samajwadi Party leader Ambika Chaudhary remarked: “Apparently, Mayawati wants only pliable officers to be holding charge of key districts during the forthcoming parliamentary elections”.
Also alleging “major play of money behind the transfers”, he quipped, “Transfer is the only industry thriving in the state under the present regime”.