Senior IAS officer Iqbal Singh Chahal has been appointed as the Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) in the Chief Minister’s Office on Friday. This move comes shortly after he was transferred from his position as Mumbai civic commissioner by the Maharashtra government, following a directive from the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The ECI, upon announcing the schedule for the Lok Sabha polls on March 16, had instructed the state government to transfer Chahal from his role as Mumbai municipal commissioner as he had served in that capacity for over three years.
Subsequently, Bhushan Gagrani, who was the ACS in the Chief Minister’s Office, was appointed as the new commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Wednesday.
Chahal, a 1989-batch IAS officer who notably led Asia’s wealthiest civic body during the COVID-19 pandemic, now assumes the position previously held by Gagrani as ACS in the Chief Minister’s Office.
In another development, Velrasu, an IAS officer from the 2002 batch, who was recently reassigned as the additional municipal commissioner (projects) of Mumbai following the EC directive, has been appointed as the secretary in the social justice department at the Mantralaya (state secretariat).
