Bengaluru: Close on the heels of reports that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee reprimanded DGP Neelamani Raju for making her walk a kilometre to the Vidhana Soudha, news has surfaced that the Director General of Police (DGP) has been transferred.
Amidst confusing reports, Chief Minister HD Kumarswamy himself had clarified that the entire news of the transfer is far from the truth. “I am only a CM designate and hence I cannot decide on transfers,” he said adding that he had received a verbal report from the DGP with regard to the episode surrounding Mamata Banerjee.
It is reported that the West Bengal CM was ‘insulted’ at having to walk a whole kilometre to the Vidhana Soudha for the swearing-in ceremony of H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday, May 23.
CM Banerjee was forced to walk to the Vidhana Soudha as there were a number of vehicles blocking the way. She then complained to the Karnataka DGP Neelamani Raju about the same as she was not happy with the traffic arrangements.
ANI tweeted a video of an irked CM Banerjee, gesturing her frustration at the DGP and later walking down the stairs and expressing her trials to former Prime Minister and JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) President Sharad Pawar.
After it was widely reported by several media houses that DGP Neelamani was transferred, she clarified that this was not the case but, she had submitted a verbal report to CM H D Kumaraswamy.
She explained the traffic fiasco to HDK telling him that as AICC President Rahul Gandhi and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s convey and that of CM Banerjee’s were moving at the same time, the latter’s convoy was asked to wait for a few minutes as the former was already en-route to the Vidhana Soudha.
Ajit Kumar Doval, former Indian intelligence and law enforcement and current National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, even took to Facebook and said: “Karnataka’s 1st Woman DGP transferred for making Mamata walk a bit in HDK’s oath ceremony. This is Kumarswamy for you. Last year, IPS officer D Roopa transferred after she exposed VIP treatment to Sasikala in jail. That was Siddaramaiah for you. Don’t worry Democracy is safe here.”
On May 23, various party leaders had shown up to the oath taking ceremony of H D Kumaraswamy as the new Chief Minister of Karnataka, in a show of strength of the opposition. Leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, AICC president Rahul Gandhi, BSP Supremo Mayawati, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav, West Bengal CM and Trinamool Congress Supremo Mamata Banerjee, Telangana CM Chandrababu Naidu, NCP Leader Sharad Pawar and Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Ajit Singh, among others.
Neelamani Raju, a 1983 IPS officer from Uttarakhand, is the first woman DGP of Karnataka, who was appointed to the post in 2017.
