JAIPUR: In a major administrative reshuffle, the Rajasthan government has transferred 69 IAS officers, including the collector of Karauli district that witnessed violence earlier this month.
The violence occurred on April 2 when some people allegedly threw stones at a bike rally on the occasion of Hindu New Year.
Several vehicles and shops were set on fire.
Over 35 people were injured.
The Department of Personnel issued the transfer orders late on Wednesday night.
According to it, commissioners of three divisions and collectors of five districts have been changed.
Ankit Kumar Singh has been posted as the new district collector of Karauli.
He replaced Rajendra Singh Shekhawat who has been transferred to Jaipur as commissioner of departmental inquiry.
IAS Vikas Sitaram Bhale, Jitendra Kumar Upadhyay and Sanwarmal Verma have been posted as divisional commissioners of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Bharatpur, respectively.
On the other hand, IAS Saurabh Swamy has been posted as Pratapgarh district collector, Nishant Jain of Jalore, Nakate Shivprasad Madan of Alwar and Prakash Chandra Sharma of Banswara.
Gaurav Goyal has been posted as Secretary to the chief minister.
In his place, Ravi Jain has been made the commissioner of the Jaipur Development Authority.
IAS officers Veenu Gupta, Dr Subodh Agarwal, Sudhansh Pant, Shikhar Aggarwal and Shreya Guha have also been transferred.
BJP MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore on Wednesday accused the Rajasthan government of working against a particular religion by imposing prohibitory orders after the recent communal riots in Karauli.
The Congress government in Rajasthan on Saturday issued guidelines asking organisers to furnish details of the contents that will be played on loud speakers in processions and rallies.
"The state government is working against a particular religion by imposing prohibitory orders.
Karauli violence is condemnable," Rathore, the BJP MP from Jaipur (Rural) constituency told reporters at a press conference here.
A fight between two communities had broken out on April 2 in Karauli in which about 35 people were injured and shops and houses of more than 80 people were burnt in arson.
The violence started when some participants of a bike rally -- carried out on the occasion of Hindu New Year -- raised provoking slogans passing through a Muslim-dominated area, which was responded with heavy stone pelting from nearby houses, the state police chief had said.
As an army man, I cannot believe that the Rajasthan Police was not aware of the conspiracy behind the violence.
The incident happened due to the politics of the Congress, Rathore, a retired colonel, said.
Rathore, who is also the national spokesperson of the BJP, said the saffron party was trying to bring truth out in the open but the Rajasthan government was preventing it from doing so by stopping its leaders and workers from visiting Karauli.
BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, party's Rajasthan chief Satish Poonia and Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) workers on their way to Karauli were on Wednesday stopped near Mahua on the Jaipur-Agra highway, with the authorities citing law and order concerns.
The BJP will continue to make efforts to reveal the truth and get the guilty punished, Rathore said.
AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday called the Karauli violence the result of the Rajasthan government's failure to maintain law and order.
Over 30 people were injured in the violence on April 2 after a bike rally being carried out to mark Hindu new year was pelted with stones.
"The Karauli riot is failure of the Congress government of Rajasthan," he told reporters at the Jaipur airport.
He was here to attend a "roza-iftar" party.
He alleged that the violence took place due to the Congress government's lax law and order situation.
The violence took place to target the Muslims, he said.
Owaisi said it is the responsibility of the government to do justice and control the law and order situation but it failed in it.
He said it was hoped that CM Ashok Gehlot would take a lesson from the mistakes of his previous tenure when a holy book of a community was burnt.
Gehlot doesn't seems to have learnt a lesson from the past mistakes and these mistakes lead to riots, he added.
Owaisi said his party will field its candidates in the Rajasthan Assembly election in 2023.
