Sanjay Pandey, a former Mumbai police commissioner and ex-director general of police in Maharashtra, is expected to run as an independent candidate for the Mumbai North Central parliamentary constituency in the Lok Sabha election.
Pandey, who is said to be connected to Uddhav Thackeray, was detained by federal agents in June 2022 in connection with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) phone-tapping scandal. Thackeray was Maharashtra’s chief minister during his tenure as Mumbai police commissioner under the MVA administration.
He is considering running as an independent candidate in the election because many individuals in this area (Mumbai North-West) have urged him to do so. Pandey, who was widely acclaimed for his ‘citizens first attitude’ in several judgements he made during his brief tenure as Mumbai police commissioner, said he has yet to reach a final conclusion on this.
Pandey, a retired 1986-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, said he will make a final decision on running in the race at the proper moment, claiming that only an educated candidate can bring about change.
While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has chosen eminent public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam in place of sitting MP Poonam Mahajan, the opposition INDIA alliance has announced Congress leader Varsha Gaikwad as their candidate for the Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha constituency.
Pandey was appointed as Mumbai police commissioner on February 18, 2022, and retired on June 30, the same year. Pandey, an IIT-Kanpur alumni, was detained by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in July and September 2022, respectively, in connection with the NSE phone tapping case. He spent nearly five months in prison after being arrested.
On December 8, 2022, the Delhi High Court granted him bail in ED’s money laundering case. While granting bail to the former IPS officer, the High Court stated that, while the CBI had charged Pandey with cheating, criminal breach of trust, and bribery, none of these accusations were discovered in the case. Bribery charges were not applicable to the case since there was no accusation of anybody seeking or taking a bribe.
Arup Patnaik, a 1979-batch IPS officer and former Mumbai police chief, is also running for Lok Sabha in 2024 from Odisha. The governing Biju Janata Dal (BJD), led by Naveen Patnaik, has fielded Arup Patnaik, who retired in 2015, from the party’s bastion Puri.
Former Mumbai police commissioner Satyapal Singh, an IPS from the 1980 batch, ran for Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat in 2014 and won.
