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Chattopadhyaya gets additional charge of vigilance bureau chief director
Chattopadhyaya, who is currently posted as special DGP, PSPCL, will be in-charge of vigilance bureau till BK Uppal is on leave
In a significant development on a day when Punjab Congress chief Navjot Sidhu met central party leaders in Delhi, chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Thursday gave additional charge of chief director, Vigilance Bureau, to 1986-batch IPS officer S Chattopadhyaya.
According to the order, Chattopadhyaya, who is currently posted as special DGP, PSPCL, will be in-charge of bureau till BK Uppal is on leave. This is the second time in three days that the in-charge of vigilance bureau has been changed. BK Upppal had proceeded on one-month leave after Channi replaced Capt Amarinder as the chief minister.
On Monday, the government had given the charge to ADGP LK Yadav, who even started sitting at the office, it is learnt. He also released a press statement on Wednesday being bureau’s chief director, ordering issuance of a WhatsApp number for the citizens where they could raise the issue of corruption by officials of his department.
Appointment of Chattopadhyaya, who is also a frontrunner for the post of Punjab Police chief, is being seen as a important development at a time when the UPSC is about to send names of three officers from among the panel sent by the state government for appointment of the police chief.
1988-batch IPS officer Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota had been given the additional charge of the Punjab DGP by chief minister Channi, ignoring Chattopadhyaya despite Navjot Sidhu backing him.
The latest move is being seen as the result of Sidhu pulling the strings in Delhi. Sidhu met party’s Punjab affairs in-charge Harish Rawat and Congress general secretary KC Venugopal on Thursday.
Chattopadhyaya had also challenged the appointment of previous DGP Dinkar Gupta and took his fight to the Supreme Court, which reserved the judgment in the case.
In 2018, he got mired in a controversy while carrying out a Punjab and Haryana high court-mandated probe, when he, in a move where he apparently overstepped his brief, informed the court that he was also probing the role of the then Punjab DGP Suresh Arora and DGP (intelligence) Dinkar Gupta in the drugs case allegedly involving SSP Raj Jit Singh.
On May 8, 2018, a Chattopadhyaya-led SIT submitted its final report to the court. He sprang a surprise by submitting a second report that was not signed by the other two SIT members. The matter is still pending with the court.
