Suvendu govt appoints Bengal top poll officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal as chief secretary

Agarwal, a 1990-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the West Bengal cadre, replaces Dushyant Nariala, a 1993-batch IAS officer, who was appointed to the post by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on March 15. Nariala will be Bengal’s new resident commissioner in Delhi.

By Monday evening, Agarwal had taken over as chief secretary, the state government’s top bureaucrat entrusted with overseeing the administration and coordinating various departments.

Agarwal is the second bureaucrat, who was closely associated with the election process, to be appointed to a key post in the state’s first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.