West Bengal: BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as the ninth Chief Minister of West Bengal on May 9, becoming the first leader from the party to hold the top post in the state. Soon after taking office, the new administration initiated a major bureaucratic reshuffle, reassigning 16 officers who had earlier been posted in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure.
As part of the reshuffle, retired IAS officer Subrata Gupta was appointed as advisor to Chief Minister Adhikari, while former Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal was named the state’s Chief Secretary.
Reacting sharply to these appointments, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi targeted what he described as a nexus between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission. In a post on X, Gandhi said, “In the BJP-EC’s ‘chor bazar’, the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward.”
Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, also criticised the appointments, alleging that the BJP-led West Bengal government had appointed Manoj Agarwal—a 1990-batch IAS officer who had overseen the recent Assembly elections in the state as Chief Electoral Officer—as the new Chief Secretary.
Ramesh further pointed out that Subrata Gupta, another 1990-batch IAS officer who had supervised the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) deletions in Bengal as Special Roll Observer, had been appointed Chief Advisor to the Chief Minister.
He said these appointments reflect what he called “brazen collusion and connivance between the Election Commission of India and the BJP,” adding that there was no longer any attempt to keep such coordination discreet.
The Congress has alleged that the appointments prove the Election Commission of India was not impartial and acted solely to benefit the BJP. It further claimed that an entire state went to elections with 27 lakh people being disqualified from voting, which it said was carefully executed by the ECI to create an electoral advantage for the BJP.
Ramesh also stated that Manoj Agarwal, a West Bengal cadre officer, had led the Election Commission–mandated Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state ahead of the Assembly elections, during which around 91 lakh voters were removed from the voter list.
Meanwhile, the West Bengal government on Sunday carried out another bureaucratic reshuffle, appointing two IAS officers and seven West Bengal Civil Service (Executive) officers in the Chief Minister’s Office. Official notifications confirmed that Subrata Gupta was appointed advisor to the Chief Minister hours after taking oath, while Shantanu Bala was named his private secretary.