As many as 179 IPS officers were transferred on Monday, with at least 23 of the postings involving Kolkata Police.
The key changes include the posting of Kunal Aggarwal as additional commissioner (crime), likely to lead the detective department, and the appointments of Dip Narayan Goswami and Nilanjan Biswas as additional commissioners of Kolkata Police.
Calcutta also got a new deputy commissioner (traffic), Manish Joshi, and a new joint commissioner of police (traffic), Surya Pratap Yadav.
The deputy commissioners in six of the city’s 10 police divisions were also changed (details in chart).
Sources in the state home department said it was significant that the post of deputy commissioner, detective department, had been revived after a gap of 17 years.
In 2009, Damayanti Sen was the last DC, DD. “After that, the post was upgraded to joint commissioner (crime). The post of DC, DD, has been revived, and no one has been posted as joint CP (crime). The city’s detective chief will be supervised by the additional commissioner (crime) now,” said a senior official of the state home department.
This is the biggest shuffle in IPS ranks since the BJP government took over.
Many said it was significant that several officers assigned key positions by the Election Commission ahead of the Bengal elections had been retained.
“Usually, after the elections, the ruling party reinstates the officers transferred by the EC to their original posts. That did not happen for many of the officers this time,” said a home department official.
Before the elections, the commission had transferred around 30 IPS officers. Some of the transfers involved key positions such as the state police chief and the police commissioners of Calcutta, Bidhannagar, Barrackpore, Howrah and Asansol-Durgapur.
Other major changes on Monday included the posting of superintendents in 12 police districts — Purulia, Bankura, Birbhum, Diamond Harbour, Baruipur, Krishnanagar, Jalpaiguri, South Dinajpur, Hooghly (rural), Howrah (rural), Purba Bardhaman and Barasat.
The list also includes transfer orders for several officers in the ranks of inspector-general of police, deputy inspector-general, superintendent and additional superintendent.