Transferred CBI officer accuses interim chief Nageswara Rao of acting out of malice
New Delhi, Jan 29: A CBI SP transferred within five months of his posting has accused the agency's interim chief M Nageswara Rao of acting out of "malice and prejudice" at the "expense of institutional and public interests".
He claimed that the action against him was due to the fact that he had complained about Rao's misconduct to the then CBI director Alok Verma.
Seeking review of his transfer from Anti-Corruption Branch here to Ghaziabad training academy, Superintendent of Police T Rajah Balaji has questioned the "mass transfers" done by Rao as "Director in-charge".
When sought a reaction, CBI Spokesperson Nitin Wakankar said the representation from Balaji about his transfer has not yet been received in the office of the director.
Additional Director Rao was given duties and responsibilities of CBI director after a high-level committee transferred Verma as DG Fire Services on January 10.
After assuming duty, Rao ordered mass transfers in the agency from the ranks of joint directors to ASPs. No justifications were given for the exercise.
Balaji, who was transferred in a late night order on January 21, said he was given the posting in New Delhi by Verma on humanitarian grounds on August 1, 2018 so that his mother-in-law, a cancer patient undergoing treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, can be taken care of.
He said this is the fourth time within two years that he has been transferred.
He said Minister of Urban Development and Housing Affairs allotted him accommodation in East Kidwai Nagar which is close to AIIMS.
"It is a known fact that I had complained about your misconduct to the then Director CBI on March 11, 2017 and subsequently when you had served me with a memo, your misconduct was set out in more explicit terms by me vide letter May 2, 2017, and, now you have abused your official position to service your personal sleepless malice and prejudice against me at the expense of institutional and public interests," Balaji said.
Wakankar said appropriate action will be taken once the representation is received.
"As and when it is received through proper channel, appropriate action as per rules will be taken. It may further be mentioned that Rajah Balaji has been transferred to Ghaziabad which is the part of the NCR only," he said.
In his letter, which is also part of his petition to the Central Administrative Tribunal, Balaji said the post of director cannot be used for any purpose other than institutional and public interests.
He said the transfer order does not offer any reasons
"It is a known fact in the public domain that the three- member high committee is to meet on January 24, 2019 to select the next director, CBI and as a matter of propriety, it was incumbent and necessary in your capacity as only director-in-charge not to go on a spree of mass transfers of various officers from the level of joint directors to additional superintendents of police, and resort to any necessary transfer only on rational grounds that merit such a course in public interest," he said in his letter dated January 22.
The meeting of the high-level committee comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge to select the new CBI chief remained inconclusive on January 24.
A new date of the meeting is yet to be decided.
Balaji said his transfer order is "plainly irrational" because as director in-charge, no review or inspection of the branches has been carried out by Rao to deduce why such mass transfers were necessary.
Referring to a quote of Shakespeare from his play Henry V "There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 5 Would men observingly distill it out", Balaji said he admits that he does not have the intelligence to 'distill' good out of Rao but he should bear animosity to him not an ailing old woman.
"I request you on purely humanitarian grounds in the hope that you can truly make a start to redeem your humanity. It is never late in life to become a good man again. Trust me. Trust the better part of your heart. No More, no less," he wrote to Rao.
The post of the CBI chief has been lying vacant since January 10 after the exit of Verma, who was engaged in a bitter fight with Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rakesh Asthana over corruption charges.
Both Verma and Asthana have accused each other of corruption.
Verma, after being removed from the post of CBI director, was named as the Director General of Fire Services, Civil Defence and Home Guards - a less significant portfolio. He did not accept the offer and wrote to the government, saying he should be considered as deemed superannuated as he has completed 60 year age of superannuation.
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Huge turnout amidst SIR shadow caps ballistic battle for Bengal
Kolkata (PTI): The West Bengal assembly polls ended on Wednesday with what the election watchdog said was the state's highest-ever voter turnout of 92.84 per cent, leading to mouth-watering anticipation ahead of the announcement of results on Monday as both contenders sounded sanguine about their victory prospects.
Wednesday's second phase saw a 92.48 per cent turnout. The concluding phase covering 142 constituencies in south Bengal appears poised to match the first phase's record voter participation of 93.19 per cent by the time final numbers are collated.
The figures put the combined poll percentage over the two-phases at 92.84 per cent. The first phase of polling was held on April 23.
"This is the highest-ever recorded poll participation since Independence in West Bengal," it said.
The capital Kolkata recorded a turnout of 88.59 per cent, with Purba Bardhaman district topping the charts at 93.78 per cent.
The scale of participation sent out an overarching political message — practically every single eligible voter in the state felt personally invested in the electoral process and its outcome. They turned out in numbers large enough to make every narrative contested and every claim of momentum politically loaded. If the first phase tested whether the BJP could retain its north Bengal citadel, the second and final round was always the real battle for the saffron party on whether it could breach the ruling TMC’s southern fortress of Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Purba Bardhaman.
At the centre of the larger political fight stood Bhabanipur, no longer merely a south Kolkata constituency but Banerjee’s political refuge, her emotional home turf and the BJP’s chosen psychological battlefield.
Banerjee, 71, seeking a fourth consecutive term after 15 years in power, faced Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in a prestige battle widely seen as a symbolic rematch of Nandigram, where Adhikari had defeated her in 2021 after crossing over from the TMC to the BJP.
Five years later, the duel shifted to Banerjee’s own bastion. For the TMC, retaining Bhabanipur is about protecting the chief minister’s authority in her own backyard. For the BJP, breaching it would puncture the aura of invincibility around Bengal’s most powerful political figure.
The constituency witnessed nearly 87 per cent polling, sharply up from around 61 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls and 57 per cent in the bypoll that brought Banerjee back to the House.
Banerjee – who usually votes later in the day and prefers staying indoors on the day of polls – broke convention and hit the ground before 8 am, moving through Chetla, Padmapukur and Chakraberia areas following complaints of alleged intimidation of local TMC leaders.
As she sat outside a booth amid heavy deployment of central forces, Adhikari arrived there and declared, "I will not allow any hooliganism." He opposed Banerjee moving around with "50-60 people" with her.
Banerjee accused the BJP of trying to "rig" the election by using central forces, election observers and officials.
"The BJP wants to rig this election. Polls in Bengal are usually peaceful. Is there a goonda raj here?" she said, alleging intimidation of TMC polling agents and late-night visits by CRPF personnel to party workers’ homes.
"The atrocities by the central forces are unprecedented. What is happening is not at all free and fair polls. But despite all this, we have full faith that we will win," she said after casting her vote.
Adhikari dismissed the charges as "frustration", claiming Banerjee had realised that "not a single vote was coming her way".
Tension flared again in Kalighat when Adhikari visited another booth, and TMC workers raised slogans against him. Police resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd as BJP supporters answered with counter-slogans. Reports of sporadic tension were also received from some other areas amid sights of long queues at polling stations, booth-level flare-ups, and political bickering.
In Kolkata's Entally, BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal alleged that the TMC's polling agents tried to assault her after she objected to overcrowding inside a booth and a lack of voter privacy.
In Panihati, BJP candidate and the R G Kar victim's mother, Ratna Debnath, faced protests, while her party colleague in Basanti, Bikash Sardar, alleged that "200 to 250 TMC goons" attacked his vehicle and assaulted his driver.
The TMC, meanwhile, accused the central forces of exercising brute force on the general voters at Falta's Belsingha village, especially women, who were beaten up during a move to disperse a crowd from near a polling station.The party also alleged CAPF high-handedness on women and a four-year-old child at Sathachhia in Howrah and on villagers at Ausgram in Purba Bardhaman district.
"In the name of ensuring security, central force jawans are not sparing even women who were brutally lathi-charged. TMC protests this highhandedness of the male jawans who exercised brute force on unarmed villagers. We draw the EC's attention to such illegal actions of the CAPF and ask the poll body to issue cease-and-desist orders against such use of force. We believe, people of Bengal will respond to this on EVMs," Anirban Banerjee, party spokesperson, said.
The BJP alleged that in several polling stations in Falta, the option to vote for the party was blocked using a tape over EVM poll buttons, and demanded repolls in the affected booths.
The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said repolling was likely to be announced in booths where EVMs were found tampered with. However, the order will only be issued after authorities receive reports from the district election officer or election observers regarding allegations of EVM tampering, such as using tapes or a blot of ink, he said.
