With barely months remaining before the crucial general elections in this country, the Mamata Banerjee administration pushed through a major reshuffle in the Bengal bureaucracy and its policing brass transferring 22 IAS and 31 IPS officers from their current posts.

The notifications were made right before the chief minister left the country on her 11-day tour of Spain and Dubai and hours after she announced a portfolio reshuffle of ministers within and outside her cabinet.

The transfers entail the top brass of district administration and police superintendents and were, evidently, done keeping in mind the Election Commission of India norms of limited time postings of government officers and avoid the possibility of the poll-body making major administrative changes in the state ahead of the elections.

Among the most significant transfers was that of Moumita Godara Basu, district magistrate of Jalpaiguri, who was appointed secretary to the health and family welfare department, the minister in charge of which is Mamata Banerjee herself. The Purba Bardhaman DM, Priyanka Singla, was appointed special secretary to the disaster management department and her counterpart in Cooch Behar, Pawan Kadyan, was moved to the finance department with the same post.

The appointment of Sashank Sethi, DM Nadia, as senior special secretary of the Tourism department, K Radhika Aiyar, DM Bankura as project director of the Kolkata Environment Improvement Investment Programme and placement of Harishanker Panicker, ADM Paschim Bardhaman, as IG, Registration and Commissioner of stamp revenue, were also considered significant.

The orders confirmed that a total of 13 out of the 23 districts of the state districts witnessed reshuffles, with several district magistrates swapped between northern and southern districts.

Among the significant transfers in the police brass were those of Akhilesh Chaturvedi, CP Siliguri, who was posted as IGP, Jalpaiguri Range with C Sudhakar, DIG, Jalpaiguri Range, replacing him as CP, Siliguri. Rashid Munir Khan, DIG Murshidabad Range, was posted as DIG, Headquarters and was replaced by Mukesh, DIG Bankura. Also Soumyadip Bhattacharya, an Additional SP at Hooghly (Rural), was promoted to the position of SP, Purba Medinipur while Amarnath K, who was holding that responsibility till now, was moved to the Krishnanagar police district as SP.

Senior officials at state secretariat Nabanna called the move as something that was “already in the pipeline” because both promotions and moving around long-term DMs and SPs were “overdue”.