3 names shortlisted for BMC chief’s post

State government fails to transfer Mumbai municipal commissioner as per ECI deadline. Panel of three IAS officers requested for Mumbai, Thane, and Navi Mumbai commissioner posts.

Mumbai: The state government failed to transfer Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal on Tuesday despite the 5 pm deadline set by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The ECI has now asked the state government to send in names of three IAS officers each for the posts of Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai commissioner.

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Highly placed sources in the bureaucracy said that the general administration department had sent the names of additional chief secretary in the CM’s secretariat Bhushan Gagrani (1991 IAS batch), BEST general manager Anil Diggikar (1991 IAS batch) and MMRDA commissioner Dr Sanjay Mukherjee (1996 IAS batch) for the post. Earlier, there was a consensus on Gagrani’s name, but now the ECI has asked for a panel of three to choose from.

An officer in the Maharashtra chief electoral officer’s department said that the chief election commissioner and two election commissioners would meet on Wednesday between noon and 2 pm and take a final call.

Meanwhile, the state government has transferred some additional municipal commissioners like P Velrasu and Ashwini Bhide, who were due for transfer. The ECI had asked for the transfer of all municipal commissioners, additional municipal commissioners and deputy municipal commissioners who had completed more than three years, officers who had done more than four years in a district and officers who were posted in their home district. While the ECI maintains that they are all connected to the poll process, in previous elections, municipal commissioners were not covered under the ECI’s transfer policy.

An IAS officer of the 1989 batch, Chahal was appointed as municipal commissioner on May 8, 2020, during the Covid-19 epidemic in place of Praveen Pardeshi. He was retained as civic chief after the BJP and Shinde-led Sena government took over.

Bhide was appointed additional commissioner in the BMC on May 9, 2020. She was given additional charge of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation when the Shiv Sena-BJP came to power while her original post was in the BMC. She is an IAS officer of the 1995 batch and is of principal secretary rank.

Velrasu was additional municipal commissioner in charge of projects in the BMC. He is an IAS officer of the 2002 batch and was posted to the BMC on January 17, 2020.

Sanjay Meena, who worked as collector of Gadchiroli, is now the commissioner of the Nagpur Metropolitan Region Development Authority, while Pune additional commissioner Kunal Khemnar is the sugar commissioner of Maharashtra. Khemnar was also due for transfer as he was appointed on August 21, 2020.

Several bureaucrats are blaming CM Shinde for the present state of the bureaucracy because it is now left to the ECI to select the commissioners of Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai. They say that the CM did not want to shift Chahal at any cost and hence did not transfer other commissioners as well.

The CM had earlier asked the general administration department to send two request letters to the ECI to spare Chahal and other commissioners as the rains were approaching and the municipal commissioners were not actually dealing with polls. But all these pleas were rejected. “Till last week, Shinde and deputy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar could have picked officers of their choice,” said a senior IAS officer. “But now the ECI will decide.”