Kolkata: Bengal's defiance of central directives continued as both chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay and DGP Virendra didn't turn up for a meeting on law and order in the state with Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla in Delhi. Senior officials said the state government was still to get a response from the Centre to its two letters - one on the summons to the chief secretary and the DGP and the other on central deputation for three Bengal cadre IPS officers.
The Union home ministry had last week directed the chief secretary and the state police chief to meet Bhalla in his on Monday to discuss law and order against the backdrop of three attacks on BJP national president JP Nadda's convoy en route to Diamond Harbour from Kolkata. A day later, the Centre directed that three IPS officers posted in the state - South Bengal IGP Rajeev Mishra, Presidency range DIG Praveen Kumar Tripathi and Diamond Harbour SP Bholanath Pandey - be sent to Delhi on central deputation.
Responding to the summons to him and DGP Virendra for the meeting in Delhi, chief secretary Bandyopadhyay had requested that their "attendance" be "dispensed with" as the state government was "already" addressing the situation in the wake of the attacks on Nadda's convoy and that several people had been arrested in this regard.
The Bengal government then, in another letter, intimated the Centre of its inability to release the three police officers for central deputation, citing the still continuing fight against the pandemic as a reason. As the state government claimed to await responses from the Centre to its twin missives, Bandyopadhyay and Virendra stayed put in Bengal and went about their "routine work", officials said. The state government is exploring legal avenues on the communication regarding the three IPS officers, the officials added, implying there was no possibility of their release as requisitioned by the Centre.
The officials said there was a paucity of IPS officers in Bengal and the "sudden and simultaneous" withdrawal of three officers overseeing arrangements for the Sagar Mela in January 2021 would result in administrative problems.
