The Election Commission of India on Monday transferred Maharashtra director-general of police Rashmi Shukla, whom Opposition leaders have accused of tapping their phones when she headed the state intelligence department in 2019.

Maharashtra votes on November 20 and technically the administration is now under the EC.

An EC source said: “Acting on complaints from Congress and other parties, the Election Commission has ordered the transfer of the Maharashtra DGP with immediate effect with directions to the chief secretary to hand over her charge to the next senior-most IPS officer in the cadre. The chief secretary has been directed to send a panel of three IPS officers by 1pm on Tuesday for the selection of one of them as Maharashtra DGP.”

Among those whose phones were allegedly tapped were the Congress’s Nana Patole, Eknath Khadse, who was then with the BJP but is now part of the NCP, and Sanjay Raut, who belongs to the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena.

The CBI closed the tapping case in 2021, and in 2023 Bombay High Court quashed both FIRs against Shukla.

The EC recently transferred the DGP of Jharkhand, the other poll-bound state.

In 2022, the US magazine Wired had reported that the Pune police were linked to hackers who allegedly planted false evidence on the electronic devices of some of the accused in the Elgaar Parishad case. Shukla was Pune’s police commissioner when the Elgaar Parishad case was filed in 2018.

Polls deferred

The EC on Monday postponed bypolls to 14 Assembly seats in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab from November 13 to 20.