With barely a week to go before Mumbai Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh’s successor is announced, it’s surprising how most Mantralaya mandarins are still foggy about who the new incumbent will be. While we’ve been hearing of several probables including Vijay Kamble and Satish Mathur, highly placed sources say that the race was always between Rakesh Maria and Ahmed Javed.
It’s more or less an open secret that Sharad Pawar’s NCP has been rooting for Maria while Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan is in favour of Ahmed Javed, and this political skirmish has really gone down to the wire — which is probably why Satyapal Singh got a few bonus weeks as the battle raged. However, your diarist has learnt from highly placed sources that Chavan has finally managed to prevail.
Though we do believe that Maria’s claim to the post was second to none and for a while it seemed he’d pipped Javed to the post, we’re told that barring a unforeseen slip between the cup and the lip, Ahmed Javed will shortly be taking charge as the new Mumbai Police Commissioner. Coming as it does after such a prolonged suspense, a round of congratulations is definitely in order.
