In a major bureaucratic reshuffle by the Nitish Kumar government, close to 70 IAS and IPS officers were given new postings in Bihar today.
According to a notification uploaded on the website of the general administration department, 45 Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officers have been given new assignments.
Prominent among those getting new postings are Ravi Manubhai Parmar (principal secretary, Tourism), Mayank Varvade (chairman-cum-managing director, Bihar State Bridge Construction Corporation) Radhey Shyam Sah (additional secretary, Health), Ishwar Chandra Sinha (joint secretary, Home) and Arvind Kumar Verma (director, Primary Education).
Also, 21 out of 38 districts in the state, got new district magistrates, notable among them being Mohd Sohail (Muzaffarpur), Pranav Kumar (Bhagalpur), Poonam (Katihar), Rahul Kumar (Begusarai), Subrat Kumar Sen (Saran) and Anand Sharma (Munger), the notification said.
Twenty-five Indian Police Services (IPS) officers also got new postings. Katihar Superintendent of Police Siddharth Mohan Jain, who is going on central deputation, has been replaced by Madhepura SP Vikas Kumar.
Sanjay Kumar has been made the new SP of Madhepura. Kishenganj SP Rajiv Mishra has been made the Senior Superintendent of Police of Gaya, where he replaces Garima Mallik, who has been in turn moved to Patna as a Commandant of the Bihar Military Police, it said.
Harpreet Kaur, the SP of Kaimur, has been made the new SSP of Muzaffarpur. Her predecessor Vivek Kumar was placed under suspension last week after an FIR was lodged against him for possessing assets disproportionate to known sources of income.
Meanwhile, reacting to the reshuffle, Congress MLC Prem Chand Mishra told reporters here, "Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is no more at ease with his alliance partner, the BJP. The government may fall any day and the spectre of president's rule is looming large over the state. It appears Kumar has effected these transfers keeping such a possibility in view".
The statement, however, was dismissed by MLC and spokesman of the ruling JD(U) Sanjay Singh.
"It is a routine administrative exercise. Leaders of the Congress would do better to stop behaving like soothsayers and pay attention to their state unit which is in tatters," Singh said.
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