Mumbai police chief Param Bir drops Barve’s notice to 12 cops

MUMBAI: Police commissioner Param Bir Singh on Tuesday dropped the action initiated by his predecessor, Sanjay Barve, against 12 policemen who had bypassed the commissionerate and applied for transfer to the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) through the director general of police. This is the second order of Barve reversed by Singh, who took over as the commissioner on Saturday.
Barve’s decision to transfer 25 police officials within the city was stayed by Singh immediately after taking charge of the top post.
On Tuesday, joint commissioner of police (administration) Naval Bajaj issued an order stating that, satisfied with the replies filed by these 12 police officers against the show-cause notices, the earlier order of stoppage of increment for a year stood cancelled. Sources said Singh was likely to give the go-ahead for the transfer of these officers to the ATS by next week.

The order mentioned that these officers should not repeat the action that had resulted in Barve’s notice.
The fallout of the showcause notice is seen as infighting among the two top IPS officers.
In May, additional director general of police Deven Bharti was promoted to ATS chief from joint commissioner of police (law and order) and immediately these 12 police personnel, who had worked under Bharti, submitted applications to DGP Subhodh Jaiswal asking for a transfer to the ATS.
As a punishment they were issued orders that their increments were stopped for a year. Rules state that the applications ought to have been submitted to Barve.
Many of the policemen in their replies stated that there were no hard and fast rules on the matter and their intention was not to hurt or bypass Barve. Some of them replied that the rule to inform their head applied only to officers who are seeking transfers out of the state or on deputation to other parts of the country.
The 12 police officers in question were senior inspectors Nitin Alaknure, Dinesh Kadam, Sudhir Dalvi, Nandkumar Gopale, Gyaneshwar Wagh and Daya Nayak and assistant inspectors Deep Bane,Wilson Rodrigues, Vishal Gaikwad, Laxmikant Salunke, Dipali Kulkarni and Ashwini Kohli.