IG Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh. (Photo from his web page)THE ELECTION Commission (EC) ticked off Punjab government on Thursday for its “cavalier and irresponsible” response to its orders to transfer a senior IPS officer during Lok Sabha elections.
Acting on a complaint from the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the EC, on April 5, had directed the state government to relieve Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh as member of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) and not give him any post related to the conduct of polls. The orders were issued after Singh gave a politically motivated interview about an ongoing probe into the police firing incident of 2015. SAD had accused Singh of misusing his position to make sensational statements while the Model Code of Conduct was in force.
READ | EC transfers IPS officer, face of the sacrilege SIT, on complaint by SAD
Although Punjab government had relieved him as IGP/ Crime, Bureau of Investigations and IGP/Organised Crime Control Unit and communicated the same to the poll panel on April 5, Singh remained a member of the SIT, which the EC only discovered once another SAD delegation brought this to its notice on June 4.
Conveying its “considered displeasure”, the EC, in a letter addressed to Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh, wrote that the state government had resorted to deliberate obfuscation” while carrying out EC’s instructions. “It is not even clear whether during the process of the elections Hon’ble Chief Minister, Punjab was kept fully briefed on the subject,” Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena wrote in the letter, even as he accepted the chief secretary’s unconditional apology conveyed on July 19.
