NEW DELHI, 20 October 2007 — After cracking the whip against police officials alleged to be close to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the Election Commission yesterday ordered appointment of K.R. Kaushik as the new state police chief.
The commission had on Monday ordered transfer of state Director General of Police P.C. Pandey and seven other senior officials ahead of assembly elections in December this year.
Pandey was Ahmedabad’s police commissioner during the 2002 post-Godhra communal riots in the state and had come under a cloud over the communal violence.
Gujarat’s opposition Congress party yesterday welcomed the commission’s transfer order ahead of the assembly polls in December.
Talking to reporters, party’s state unit chief Bharatsinh Solanki said here that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, instead of protesting the poll panel’s directions, should have taken the step on its own. Solanki said that Congress President Sonia Gandhi may kick-start the party’s election campaign towards the end of this month.
Solanki said Sonia could address either a women’s convention being planned at Bhuj in Kutch district coinciding with former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s death anniversary on Oct. 31 or another function at Karamsad in Kheda district, some 35 km from here, for Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary the same day.
