Hyderabad: Vijayawada’s police commissioner Kanthi Rana Tata and Andhra Pradesh’s director general of police (intelligence) P. Sitaramanjaneyulu were transferred by Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday (April 23) evening in the backdrop of the recent attack on chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy using stones.
The commission has asked the state’s chief secretary to relieve the two senior IPS officers of their duties with immediate effect and not give them any election-related work till the completion of simultaneous elections to parliament and the state assembly.
The commission also asked the chief secretary to furnish a panel of three officers for each of the two posts in their respective ranks by 3 pm on Wednesday to fill the vacancies caused by their exit.
The transfer of the officers is viewed in the context of a letter written by a former Rajya Sabha member of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Ravindra Kumar, to chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar after the attack on Jagan during his election rally in Vijayawada.
Ravindra Kumar, a senior advocate, sought the transfer of not only the two officers but also of Andhra Pradesh’s director general of police and head of police force, K.V. Rajendranath Reddy, as there was every possibility of the police shifting the blame for the attack on TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu.
There was also the possibility of police foisting false cases on TDP workers as culprits to conceal their own shortcomings.
The letter condemned the attack on Jagan and voiced concern over what it said was the inability of the police to provide adequate security arrangements for him in Vijayawada, where the entire top brass of the police is stationed.
Ravindra Kumar expressed concern that the police may not ensure free and fair elections in Andhra Pradesh in these circumstances on May 13.
He referred to the stone pelting on Chandrababu Naidu in Chittoor and the TDP office in Mangalagiri in support of his claim that the party was a targeted for its political rivals.
He sought an inquiry into the attack on Jagan by the Central Bureau of Investigation, saying the local police had lost professionalism in the discharge of its duties and could not ensure impartiality.
