CAT stays suspension of IAS officer who checked PM's copter
Bengaluru, Apr 25: The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) bench here Thursday stayed the Election Commission order suspending IAS officer Mohammed Mohsin for checking prime minister Narendra Modi's helicopter in Odisha.
The officer from Karnataka cadre, deployed in Odisha as a general observer, was suspended on April 17 for checking Modi's helicopter in Odisha's Sambalpur in "violation" of norms for dealing with SPG protectees and sent back to the state.
The CAT maintained that during an election process while reasonable assurances of protection and security must be made available to SPG protectees, it cannot be said "they are eligible for anything and everything."
The bench also ordered issue of notice to the EC and "four others" and posted the matter for further hearing on June 6.
Mohsin had tried to check some luggage in the convoy of the Prime Minister during his campaign visit and the EC had said he had acted in violation of its existing instructions.
In its order, CAT member (Judicial) Dr K B Suresh noted there was a circular regarding the SPG protectees that they are exempted from certain examinations on certain grounds.
"We will not go into the SPG protectees guidelines as per the bluebook right now, but the rule of law must prevail," he said.
The CAT also took note of the plea of the applicant's counsel who said there were news about heavy packages unloaded from prime minister's cavalcade being taken away in other vehicle.
Questions were raised but apparently no action followed, it said.
Noting that under the Constitutional process of federal structure, even though the EC has supervisory powers over the employees under its control at that moment of time, the CAT said once they are out of it, the commission's powers would cease.
The tribunal said: "Thereforethe suspension order issued by the election commission cannot, on the face of it, lie. It is hereby stayed."
However, the CAT said it would look into this matter afresh once it received the response from the EC.
The tribunal said the applicant will be eligible to rejoin his former position under the Karnataka government "without any further ado about it".
Following the suspension, an EC source had said: "It has been laid down that SPG protectees are exempted from checking.
He (the officer) should have known the instruction being an observer. The reason for suspension is dereliction of duty."
IAS officer Mohammed Mohsin
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
